I am hoping that we can have an honest discussion about this.
I will start with a personal anecdote so that I can set the tone for this discussion.
One thing I have noticed myself doing is excusing, or trying to justify lines in these songs (specifically revolving around this beef because it has been all about the treatment of women and underaged girls) even though they were either overtly misogynistic or more subtle. One example is: I was having a discussion with someone about the sexy redd line and the pop ass wit em line from Euphoria. They brought up how it was weird that to diss a man you needed to pin them against women to emasculate them. I tried to justify it by saying "well, Drake has always had an insecurity about his masculinity, he was saying this, or he was saying that.. he wasnt pinning Drake against these women." We had a discussion about masculinity and why it needed to be pinned against femininity for that line to be an actual diss. And I realized I was okay justifying misogyny (both from Drake and Kendrick) because I thought that it was funny, or that it hurt Drake. When in reality, I should be opposed to all forms of misogyny, and there should be no reason for it in a discussion over who is the best lyricist, or who is the best artist.
One thing that is apparent from this (at least to me), is that both Kendrick and Drake are using women as a means to justify the end. I will explain what I mean: Drake keeps bringing up the abuse that Kendrick's fiancé has suffered by Kendrick. Whether or not this allegation is true, in my eyes is irrelevant. It is being used ONLY to hurt Kendrick, it is not being used to HELP Whitney. I do not think that Drake has a moral issue with the abuse, if he did, he would not be using it as a bludgeoning device on a diss track, he would be running to Whitney to see if she needed help. I think I can make the same argument for Kendrick as well, I know he is Mr. Morale, but in my eyes it looks like he is using these allegations as a way to harm drake, and not to help the people who he claims are being hurt. From people outside of this community, it looks like two famous guys and their fans using women as objects without any care.
I have noticed many fans doing the same thing I was doing, where we would justify overt or subtle misogyny because it was funny, or because it was a slam dunk. This is how misogyny gets perpetuated, and I think that this is one time where we can get ahead of it as a community. We have the two largest artists in the industry going head to head over what are very serious allegations about sexual assault, domestic abuse and I think that this entire conversation needs to be shifted away from who is winning because from where I am sitting, we are all losing. We are defending two people who either A) have very serious skeletons in their closet or B) are using allegations of mistreating women as a tool to damage the other's career, not help the victims. I think either way you spin it, we come out losing as a community.
I am sorry if this feels like projection, but I think this is a conversation that should be had about this beef and I have noticed a lot of outside commentators talking about these points without much mention of them from within our community. I hope we can have a conversation about what you think I got right, what you think I got wrong, and maybe we can all come away a little better than we were before.
Much love

Hello people of Reddit, this is going to be a long, comprehensive post so forgive me in advance but I think it’s crucial I don’t leave out any information so here goes:
To catch everyone up to speed, The other day I seem to have shaken up the chess world after defeating Daniel Naroditsky in a long blitz match on chess.com playing under my anonymous chess.com account Viih_Sou (chess.com/membeViih_Sou) starting every game with 1 a4 2 Ra3 with white, and 1 a5 2 Ra6 with black. Speculations have run wild about who could be behind this mysterious account, Could it be Magnus trolling? Hikaru? A young Indian prodigy? A Brazilian Grandmaster? Stockfish? Who would be strong enough to pull such a stunt, defeating such an amazing online blitz player, certainly one of the strongest in the world in peak form, with rook odds? Well, chess.com soon closed the account for a fair play violation, supposedly solving this mystery..
Well it’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me. GM Brandon Jacobson, but you can call me Brandon.
Before I get into what happened and how this all started, I’d like to share a little bit about myself.
Part 1: Who am I?
Ever since learning the game at the age of 5 wanting to imitate my older brother who learned from an after school program, I’ve always been fascinated with chess, being an extremely intuitive person and an over thinker combined with being extremely competitive, I’ve always found my purpose and comfort in chess. Coming from a family who didn’t even know the rules, as early as I can remember, being around 8 years old I would compile notebooks upon notebooks of openings I would attempt to teach myself using my Houdini program which I was absolutely enamored with. Playing at my local club every weekend was the highlight of my week. Slowly I kept improving and improving, and throughout the years I would be inspired time and time again by reading the classics (for example My System by Nimzowich). During difficult times in my childhood, chess would always be my escape, something with endless room to learn and become better at, and when I would analyze chess, nothing else in the world mattered. My approach to learning chess always made me stand out from other talented children I was surrounded by, who were all extremely tactically sharp from consuming puzzles prescribed by their coaches, meanwhile I always shocked coaches and grandmasters with my intuition and understanding for the game at such a young age. I can still vividly remember being 10 years old rated around 2100, attending a US Chess School camp, graciously run by IM Greg Shahade giving talented American kids an opportunity for a few days of free training. I was by far the youngest and the lowest rated player, there were many FMs and IMs attending as well. During the camp, we were given an “intuition test”: the idea being that we would have to look at a lot of positions of strategic nature in little time and write down our first instinct move, and in general the strongest players would perform the best, as it tests understanding more so than tactical patterns one can internalize. In the end, I had scored the highest of all the students, and gave me a huge confidence boost going forward, realizing I had what it took.
Fast forward a little while, and I was invited to the Kasparov Chess Foundation program, giving young American talents an opportunity to meet and work with none other than Garry Kasparov for a few days, and this is also where I had met, now a strong grandmaster in addition to being my best friend, Andrew Hong who you’ll hear more about shortly. As we were presenting our games to Kasparov, he quickly noticed my incredible chess understanding but carefree attitude, fooling around and causing trouble while the others would try to solve endgame studies, as difficult calculation never appealed to me the way it did others, and I could never bring myself to focus. At the end of the session, Kasparov had talked to my mother, telling her what was already clear: that I’m extremely talented but lazy, and I’m going to need to start working hard.
Well, I didn’t end up taking his advice, having fun through my teen years with my completely relaxed attitude at every tournament. Always being a streaky player, being unstoppable when I’m in form, but also having tilt streaks, one of my most memorable tournament experiences was being 15 years old, missing a round being hospitalized overnight during a tournament, sleeping maybe an hour with IV tubes stuck to me, going to play that same day, ending with a 2700 performance, and laughing about the whole experience. I’ve always performed my best enjoying doing what I loved, without any expectations or pressure.
Knowing how difficult professional chess life is, trying to make ends meet if you’re not an absolute top player, I had never planned a career in chess. I started attending University at the age of 15, and my improvement/motivation to study had stagnated. I became a grandmaster at 16, and for a while decided to focus partly on school partly on chess. Classical chess started to feel different than it used to. I would let my nerves get to me, get in my own head, start doubting myself, feeling guilty for taking time away from developing another career, and getting frustrated that I wasn’t achieving the results I had wanted despite knowing I was improving as a player.
Throughout these struggles, online blitz was always a huge confidence booster for me, being able to rely on my intuition and not having the pressure of over the board chess, I was able to show what I was capable of. It’s where I always felt at home. Improving over the years, and being competitive with top level players at times, I had started to realize that I have real potential that would be such a shame to waste, even though I was always overshadowed by juniors who have had more over the board success than I.
So finally, this past fall, I had taken the decision to take some time off school and give myself a fair shot at making it to the top, and committed to myself to working hard on chess. During this time, I had also played a lot of blitz online on my main account (chess.com/membebrandonjacobson), achieving 3100+ for multiple stretches, defeating many strong players in matches. Nevertheless, I would needlessly get in my own head as soon as I see Hikaru or Danya’s name pop up on my screen, always having awful results against them relative to my level against other opponents.
In any case, toward the end of 2023 I had travelled to Europe to play a few tournaments and see once and for all if I had it in me or I was just another hopeless dreamer. In the end, I did indeed gain some rating, having great experiences along the way, for example scoring 8/10 in the Sunway Sitges open, defeating the Russian prodigy Volodar Murzin in a blitz playoff, picking up 17 rating points for my efforts. I returned home to my current rating of 2575, and although the results were great on paper for me, I can’t say I was entirely happy with the outcome, knowing how my losses were entirely self inflicted with similar nerve issues I had previously been experiencing for years, realizing it’s the one thing holding me back.
So I return back home and make a commitment to myself that I’m going to reset and get my head together. After recovering from the string of tournaments, I finally decide to play a day of serious blitz where I’m totally focused, beginning with defeating Parham Maghsoodloo with a score of 10.5-2.5. Soon after I receive a challenge from Hikaru, and for the first time, I felt free. Completely free from nerves and expectations, allowing myself to just enjoy the opportunity to play. The score ended 8.5-4.5 in his favor, with every game being super close and competitive. Naturally I couldn’t help myself and watch the VOD of his stream afterwards, and I started laughing hysterically as he kept repeating (maybe slightly paraphrased) “I don’t know what’s going on today you guys, Brando normally sort of just rolls over and dies but today he’s really fighting hard and it irks me, I don’t know why he’s so motivated and playing well today!”. His assessment was completely true, only that I was not doing anything special, but simply allowing myself to play at my normal level rather than freezing up and shaking at the idea of playing a match against him.
Little did I know this high would be the last day I’d be able to seriously play chess in months. After I had finally made serious improvement and felt more motivated than ever, I was facing some serious health issues, which until now I hadn’t opened up about publicly, only explaining “burnout” to most of my friends/colleagues as a reason for disappearing from the chess world. During this difficult time, I would continue to work as hard as I could toward improving my ability for classical chess, but being advised not to play, with my body not being well equipped to handle any additional stress.
Part 2: the backstory
There for me to every step of the way throughout this slow recovery process was the above mentioned best friend/training partner GM Andrew Hong. Trying to give me a laugh, he had showed me some of his analysis on 1 a4 2 Ra3 (and 1a5 2 Ra6 for black). My immediate response was that of any sane person, telling him, using some colorful language, to please stop wasting my time and to talk to me about something else. Andrew insisted, telling me to play some logical moves against it, and if I can comfortably refute it he’d shut up about it. Well, sure enough not only was I unable to put him away, but I was struggling to survive against it, over and over and over again. I could not believe my eyes. He was prepared to every possible setup, and had such a wide array of ideas against all of them. He even joked to me that a chessable course on it might be on the way!
I joined team rook odds. We continued to analyze more ideas, seeing the power of the coordination of the 2 bishops, realizing that this could become a powerful blitz weapon.
This lasted a few weeks, until I urged him to try it in some blitz games of his own. He tested it on his anonymous account (chess.com/membePastaaontwitch) and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, winning game after game against WFAFAF. Did he find a truly brilliant weapon, one which no one can take seriously?
Part 3: Viih_Sou
I had created my anonymous account, chess.com/membeViih_Sou many years ago, inspired by an inside joke I had with some Brazilian friends at the time as a way to fool around, test openings, etc. Ironically, as my rating had dropped a bunch on my main account due to trying to play while mitigating some of my focus in an unsuccessful attempt to keep my heart rate down, I had decided to play a few games here and there to ease myself back into blitz and avoid the pressure of potential cheating accusations due to the difference in level. This is the reality of the modern world of chess if you’re not a 2700+ player, being accused by everyone to your face and behind your back every time a good result is achieved. I’ve even had one prominent, well respected grandmaster write an entire article praising my talent as a teenager only to accuse me of cheating behind my back. Well, clearly this was no exception..
Finally beginning to feel myself again, and inspired my Andrew’s success with the opening, I dove right in, beginning on April 30. After a few warmup games, I decided to test my luck too. Having 0 expectations, in complete shock I soon realized what an incredible weapon this truly was. Feeling myself again, with pure confidence and totally in the zone, I went on many hour farming sessions as I always enjoyed in the past. How could I be crushing people with these ridiculous odds?
It soon started to click that I was barely giving odds at all. In online 3+0, all that matters is reaching familiar positions where you have the ability to play quick moves and continuously keep the pressure on your opponent, and in every single game that is exactly what was happening. Winning games left and right with similar themes and tricks, and although playing totally unsound throughout the whole game according to stockfish, having opponents eventually collapse under the pressure.
Soon enough, I get paired with none other than Daniel Naroditsky. Sure, I had gained confidence and was back to peak form, but how could I possibly get away with such utter stupidity against Danya?
Well, there was only one way to find out, and I was not going to back out now. With absolutely 0 pressure on me, and all of it on him to prove he can put me away, I had nothing to lose. Absolute madness ensued, with insanely wild games played from both of us throughout our nearly 70 game match through the night, I couldn’t believe I was pulling it off. With so many creative ideas from the both of us, for example this double exchange sacrifice which later turned out to be +7 for white but with outposts for my pieces and the queenside pawns marching down long term, my king slowly ran to the queen and won in incredible fashion: https://www.chess.com/game/live/108391163433?username=viih_sou
But of course, more often than not I would find tactical tricks from lost positions for example this game which was featured on one of the original Reddit posts about this match, and in Gotham chess’ video: https://www.chess.com/game/live/108382226803?username=viih_sou
Throughout the match, Danya undoubtedly had some streaks of tilt, and it can clearly be seen that the quality of his play he showed was far lower than his normal level and what he’s capable of, obviously annoyed and flabbergasted by what was happening, as anyone would be. But nevertheless, overall I thought it was an incredibly fun match for the both of us, and was elated to be winning by a score of (forgive me if I’m wrong) around 40-29 if I’m not mistaken: an unusual feat against him, who has historically gotten the better of me, but at the same time certainly not the first time I’d won a match. Completely unbeknownst to me at the time of course, this was going viral on Reddit, theories about who this anonymous GM could possibly be.
I could not believe what I was seeing next, as I was suddenly forced to resign by the server in the opening, and kicked out of live chess. Some type of glitch? Unsure of what had happened, I had logged on again soon after with a seemingly normal interface, so I had emailed support and asked what happened. I received a response the next day, stating that I was banned for a fair play violation with absolutely 0 explanation.
My jaw dropped, I could not believe what I was seeing. Confusion turned to anxiety turned to anger. I quickly submitted an appeal to which I still haven’t heard a response to.
Had I really played so well the algorithm flagged me for cheating? Well sure enough, I got my ego in check when I went through the games and saw just how low the quality of games actually were, with us both swinging the evaluation so much in almost every game. But this made the ban all the more confusing, what can even be seen as suspicious in any way?
And then the frustration ensued. Is the only way someone could defeat Daniel Naroditsky in a match being 2750+, and otherwise you must be a cheater? Firstly, our difference in strength in classical chess is negligible, if at all. It is well established, and for good reason, that he is among the best online blitz players in the world, despite his relatively low classical rating, but the same can’t be true about anyone else? Hikaru on his stream earlier that morning had thought it could have been Wesley So, as it seems he would pull off such a troll. If he played these games it would be all fun and games I suppose, but because it was me, it’s in no way possible. And of course we are discounting the fact that a little over a year ago I had beaten Wesley 9 games in a row on his anonymous account (that has been made public by Hikaru and others) dogsofwar. Or was I cheating then too, or any time I’ve performed well?
People were also speculating that it could be a young Indian prodigy, and jokingly suggested Gukesh. But again, blitz chess, especially without increment, and classical chess are extremely different and require different skill sets. I’ve always been gifted at making quick intuitive decisions, and if I were to play a classical match against Gukesh, I’d have a close to 0 chance of winning, however I think I’d be the heavy favorite in online 3+0, given that he doesn’t have much online chess experience.
Not only this, the day after our match, Andrew had played against none other than Hikaru himself in his viewer arena, winning in the exact same fashion! https://www.chess.com/game/live/108421876919?username=pastaaontwitch So I suppose he was cheating this game as well?
I apologize if I’m coming across as arrogant, and I’m in no way intending to, I’m trying my best to simply share as much information as possible, and as you can imagine I’m beyond confused and angry, and it goes to show the bigger problem with online chess as a whole.
When Jose Martinez Alcantara (Jospem) performs exceptionally well in some online events, the entire world accuses him of cheating behind his back like middle school children, until he’s backed into a corner and scores second place in titled Tuesday in front of a camera crew, and it still didn’t stop the accusations? Or of course we simply move past the mass harassment of the 17 year old Denis Lazavik. The chess world: the only place where it’s socially accepted for grown “men” to continuously attack a teenager and attempt ruin his career over being upset from losing a game, and nobody does or says anything about it.
I would assume the chess.com staff had simply seen Brandon Jacobson? Beating our Danya with “rook odds”? No way! And hit the ban button, that would explain their radio silence in response to my appeal. Who knows for sure, guess we never will. What’s also funny to me is the fact that Danya himself has pet lines he has played against me for years that are objectively equally as bad! Pircs with c6, Bg4, certain King’s Indian lines, and the list goes on.
I’m tired of it all, I’m tired of being assumed guilty until you’re proven innocent. I’m tired of being anxious every time I’m performing well that people will start harassing me too. And unfortunately, I don’t think any of us know what the true extent of the cheating problem in chess is, and I don’t even see a great solution to this. I hate cheaters as much as everyone else, and I believe it ruins the integrity of the game for hard working people.
These last few days have been a nightmare for me, countless people messaging me calling me a cheater among other names that I will not repeat, and as we stand right now I am also shadow banned (does not officially show the account is closed for privacy purposes but cannot log in) on my main account as well. Who knows what will happen going forward, but I knew I needed to share my story, obviously to properly defend myself, but also to bring attention to what I believe could be the real downfall of online chess: false accusations.
And for some final remarks, if you don’t believe a word I’ve written:

1. Who would be stupid enough to cheat against Daniel Naroditsky and risk their reputation, my future, over meaningless blitz games.
2. I could decide to stay anonymous forever, had I truly been a cheater, but I’m sharing my story publicly, without care how this may damage my reputation. The truth always prevails in the end.

I apologize again for the length of this post, but I really wanted to paint a full picture of not just this unfortunate event, but my story as a chess player as well.
I will be happy to reply to questions/comments and add any clarification to anything I’ve said.
Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Does anyone else think the writers slacked in season five on Lucy's character development and his rinkadinkadoo line was completely over used instead of giving him proper dialogue that added to his role in the story in the first four seasons when he used it as a catch phrase it was always random and fun but in season five it's almost all he says and I feel like the writing room didn't try to keep him funny and clever like in previous seasons I also noticed a lot of the plot points being reddit theories while the show was off air like they took reddit theories and turned them cannon to please fans example being mop girl becoming an elf and receiving the kingdom freckles being beans brother and I also feel like Alvas whole role as a villian was thrown in the trash and him going to the moon with the trogs made absolutely no sense whatsoever

Well hello there again! Today we are going to go over some things that many people, even some current users of Flycast, were not aware of based on reactions from the community. Flycast has had quite a journey, and shows no sign of slowing down any time soon. I want to touch base on some things that should be general knowledge about flycast for nerds and newbies alike. I feel in order to accuratly convey the message I want to, I must give a little background in emulation, what it is, the true purpose for it, and what the hold up is with making a perfect emulator. ALSO, I would like to note, My left hand is almost 100% numb so my grammer and spelling suffer for it, and while I try my best, I miss many of them in long posts like this, so I am very sorry...

Emulation: What is the real point?

Emulators main and actual legit reason for existance is simple, to Perfectly recreat an enviroment to enjoy the Game (Art) of your choice. One day not to far in the future, there will not be any more NES systems working with original hardware on this planet. Yes, SOMETIMES there are reproductions, or substitutes that will WORK, but to say you can play a NES game, on original NES hardware knowing that every single game will run EXACTLY as it was made and ran on the NES. You wont be able to say this forever, which bring us to the real point of emulation, Preservation. The goal of an emulator is to be 100% accurate while also being easy enough to run. What I mean is that peoiple do not understand what goes in to emulation. Every system on a console (CPU/GPU/AUDIO/PROCESSING/Ect) ran most of the time on its own chip, some times even having multiple (sega satern had 2 GPU chips that worked to bring you the backgrounds on one gpu and the moving interactable assets on the other gpu) and all ran at different clock speeds, and now you need to build a program, that will not only copy everything each chip did, but sync them up together and run them perfectly accurate to their running on the original hardware. For example, back in the late '90s, Nesticle was easily the NES emulator of choice, with system requirements of roughly 25MHz. This performance came at a significant cost: game images were hacked to run on this emulator specifically, rendering these games unplayable on both real hardware and on other emulators, creating a sort of lock-in effect that took a long while to break. These days, the most dominant emulators are Nestopia and Nintendulator, requiring 800MHz and 1.6GHz, respectively, to attain full speed. The need for speed isn't because the emulators aren't well optimized: it's because they are a far more faithful recreation of the original NES hardware in software, which leads us to the next topic....

Why not build emulators 100% accurate?

Short answer, we wouldnt have anything to run them on...

The Snes Cpu runs at 5Mhz...not Ghz, Mhz.... and it takes about 3000MHZ (3Ghz) to 100% accurately emulate the Snes... in perspective, the sega dreamcast ran at 200mhz.... using the same math ( which this isnt really linear due to the differences with ALL the chips that are being emulated by the single CPU of the device running the emulator) that means it takes about 600x the power to emulate the SNES accurately, meaning 120,000 MHZ or 120 GHZ ( which remember, this isnt linear, as the dreamcasts other componets were obviously working much hardefaster as well, so it is NOT just about the original HW CPU speeds. So what is the difference between Nesticle running NES at roughly 25 Mhz, and Nintendulator running at 1.6 Ghz? How accuratly it emulates the cycles of the old hardware. Now in truth, most software runs with great tolerance to timing issues and appears to be functioning normally even if timing is off by as much as 20 percent. allowing just about every game to run and for the most part play fine for the average gamer... but, here is an example of when this is not enough in Speedy Gonzales. This is an SNES platformer. At first glance, it appears to run fine in any emulator. Yet once you reach stage 6-1, you can quickly spot the difference between an accurate emulator and a fast one: there is a switch, required to complete the level, where the game will deadlock if a rare hardware edge case is not emulated. Unless the software does everything in the exact same way the hardware used to, the game remains broken. Now Is this ONE CASE reason to make your emulator run at higher speeds, reducing the number of devices out there that can run it? The answer is No, so what do you do? Well, there are a few options from here...

Then how do we get more accurate while playing it on something less powerful then the International Space Station?

Welp, There are a few ways to do this.

Fix the Rom

This means editing the rom in order to make such issues work for the emulator and the current way it is running. This is the least preferable. This means in order to play that specific game on that specific emulator, you must have that SPECIFIC modded copy of the rom... Imagine having to find SPECIAL FYLCAST ONLY versions of games to play in order to not get stopped by a game breaking bug. If every emulator had to have a special version of an individual game to run correctly, emulation would be a nightmare.

Improve the accuracy of the emulator

This is better then the last option, but not always practical. Why would making your emulator harder to run to fix an issue help? Well, there is a difference between optimization, and needing more resources. Programs can only be written to be SO efficent. Think about a game you like, and when it launched. Red dead redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 are PERFECT examples. I got both games on launch day. The former wasn't unplayable like the CP was, but as time went on, you would notice after updates, you would seem to have higher frame rates, to a degree. This is optimization, and it has its limitations. So while you can have a Snes Emulator running at 1300 Mhz and 2000Mhz, and the former can be more accurate. Eventually thou, you will hit point of diminishing returns, the same as you do making the emulator more accurate, raising its requirements. This brings us to the lasts option, and most sought after..

Emulator specific fixes

It is possible for a well-optimized, speed-oriented SNES emulator to run at full speed using only 300MHz of processing power. You will also end up with HUNDREDS of random bugs. What typically happens is that the problems are specifically hacked around. Both ZSNES and Snes9X contain internal lists of the most popular fifty or so games. When you load those games, the emulators tweak their timing values and patch out certain areas of code to get these games running. It's an improvement over the Nesticle days of the games themselves being hacked externally, but it is still cheating, regardless of the visual end results.
The casual gamer who only plays the most popular twenty or so titles will see no visible differences between an emulator requiring 300MHz and another requiring 3GHz, so they will of course go with the former. Although I do respect and appreciate speed-oriented emulators, one concerned with accuracy can't help but lament the way this approach stalls progress. Without more players using the more accurate emulators, we won't find the bugs in all the games the emulator supports. The more people we have playing the games in the way they were intended, the better the emulator can become as issues are found and stomped out—not by fixing specific code for each game, but by fixing the accuracy of the emulator.

Ok, well all this is fine and dandy, but WHY FLYCAST...

Well, here are some things Flycast does

1. Flycast has a HUGE numberof Game specific fixes in the code and accuracy upgrades and corrections built right in to flycast. What does this mean for you as the user? This means you will have the best experence playing any of the games from Naomi1, Naomi 2, Atomiswave, and of course, Dreamcast, becasue for 10 years, any issues in gammes have been reported, fixed, and moved on from.
2. Flycast had its 10th birthday this year. Having been around this long, most fixes we see now, are done right in the code, and pushed out in the update to flycast, and This keeps the requirements down, while maintaing such a high level of accuracy. As stated above, the best way is to have the community playing all the games, reporting bugs they find, and then being fixed in the emulators back end for that specific issue or issues in a specific title, or titles. Due to the age of flycast, and the nonstop hard work over thoes 10 years, Flycast is hitting the point, that with real bios, most games play BETTER then on the original dreamcast, where the games pushed the dreamcast hardware to its limits, giving you slowdowns that do not exist on decent hardware with Flycast. This process would have been done 10 times over if every person using flycast reported every game bug when they found it, when that number is hoestly a mear fraction of that. First, you have to think, how many people emulate dreamcast. Due to its short shelf life, the OG DC community isnt as large as most other systems, so others who might have played a game or two in Retroarch with Flycasts Core, or on Redream, thoes users wouldnt ever reach out. The average player, maybe they emulate a few of their favorite systems growing up... you tend to see Nes/SNES, N64, Ps1, and Ps2 as the most emulated systems. but lets say DC is thrown in there with a few games. Most of thoes gamers will not report any bugs. TThen you have the smallest 2% of Flycast users, the Diehards. Depending on the games they play, If THEY find a bug, depending on how bad it is, they have the highest chance to report it, and even then, i'd say its around 33% of these users, at the MOST.
3. Flycast even has a "Plug and play mode" with its "HLE BIOS"Meaning that with out finding your own bios, flycast can, out of the box with nothing extra, can play its library with over a 90% compatibility across the HUGE library of content from 4 different systems, all running right here on just about any device you have.. This means for most players that maybe do not know how/ do not play flycast enough to set up the real bios files(or they dont have/can't find them to use) they can enjoy playing these games and most likely will never notice anything different. This is amazing, and is one of the top, if not the best emulator for any system that does this.

So.....Erm....Weeeeeeeeell.... Why Flycast?

Well, in short, it is the best. Many people say "well it all depends on your prefrence". Ok, What do you prefer, An emulator that you can just download and play most games most of the way thru with out seeing and glitches, and most glitches, you can work around or ignore as they are not game breaking, and many are in specific spots or locations out of the whole game, an emulator when using real bios at this point has VERY FEW bugs/glitches/behavioor in games that are not wanted/as the game was designed to be, an emulator that has more features then any other emulator in its class, an emulator that gets updated versions released 6 days a week, that do more then "General bug fixes" With new features CONSTANTLY being added, and refined. In this past week alone we have gotten a WHOLE nbew system developed implemented and its being developed DAILY... Every morning i grab the new dev release and this is amazing seeing the emulator growing in front of your eyes, TEN years in, With the original DEV still here running the show.

Updates...?

Flying head has kept this project alive for over 10 years now.which is funny this is where I ended up, seeing as i remember 9 years ago trying Dreamcast emulation for the first time, and IYKYK, but having 4 emulators to play your library of 3 games, was not a good time. When I ordered my Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, EPIC DEVICE BTW,One day one, Flyinghead said "LET THERE BE RETRO ACHIVEMENTS".....Day 2 called for some bug fixes and a new menu layout. Day three was adding an interface to view all the current games achievements right from FC. Today, We got Hardcore mode intergrated, so this shows the state of development of FLYCAST, being it is very active, with stable versions coming out consistently,b and that Flyinghead listens to his community. Remember, He has spent ten years, 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of hours of coding, testing, recompiling, and breaking things, with out ever asking for a penny from us. Please, support the development of flycast on new devices (yea, Flying head buys new hardware to make new distros, and this is show in the next section that he really does!)

Ok, Ok, What can I play flycast on?

Did you know flycast can run on just about any device out there that has enough horse power, thru the VERY MANY Distros, and then even Retroarch Flycast Core. Some devices you can use, PSVITA, Nintendo switch, Android, Ios, Linux, Steam deck, Mac, Xbox 1, Any device that supports 6th gen systems thru Retro arch (this one is insane the ammount of OTHER devices that do not fall under the Stand Alone Distros) which makes flycast one of the MOST versitile emulators ANYWHERE. If you enjoy playing flycast on the device you currently are on,you can always buy Flyinghead a coffee to help him stay up thru the long sleepless nights, and help him off set the different devies he gets to further develop flycast on the distros he maintains currently, and bring more to us, like currently, RASPI is getting work done to it this AM.

OK! I GET IT. How do I say thanks thou and help out if i can not code?

Easist, fastest way to help....Donate.

Our beloved leade... Erm... Developer, Flyinghead, has put 10 years worth of coding and testing, adn compiling, and bug fixes, and development, and optimizations, from day one, keeping it free.Send him a little love here https://buymeacoffee.com/hhwtpernwq and remember, All the hours you have used flycast with out spending a penny, now is your time to say thanks with a couple bucks to keep this 10 year old project, with the same lead dev from day 1. Flycast has been free and open source sense day 1, never doing silly things like after serving a community for many years, going closed source and charging to get features any other emulator for any other system offers for free, not have a stable release version update in over four years while still charging 6$, ( I can understand the $0.99 we see at times, I get it, Lots of work and frustration and time), We get daily dev releases, then once or twice a week thoes get mode to the stable release build, and every couple months or so, We have enough content for Flyinghead to release a new stable release....but MAKE SURE YOU UPDATE YOUR RELEASE CONSTANTLY. Simply, Go here, https://flyinghead.github.io/flycast-builds/, download your release, run it as per your system, and a dialog shows that your upgrade was complete, and that is it. No re installing, moving, deleting, reconfigurating, or anything else of the sort. You are just good to go, like nothing changed(except now you have the new features, bugfixes, and optimizations. I do this daily, and follow the DEV releases to see the features being built in real time day by day..... and in the last 4 months of this, Never have I had a version that "broke" things with out a hotfix coming almost instantly.
Is there some proof of this?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAqJSIQRZ6A

Well... ok, but what if playing Dreamcast games gets boring?

YOU CAN PLAY ARCADE GAMES
Flycast also plays Atomiswave, Naomi 1 & 2 arcade games. This adds a LOAD of games, many you most likely played in arcades back in the 2000s and forward. It also included, for the dreamcast, ports of many of these games released back in the day and they tend to have more content in thoes version due to arcade games being very short. Sometimes thou, depending on the title, the Arcade version has better looking textures.
\**TEXTURE PACKS**\**
YES! I said Texture packs! Over at flycast_texture_packs is the single largest collection of upscale and replacement texture packs for flycast. This is a newer project for me, so i update games every day, so make sure you check back daily for new games, and updates for the current games.
\**Compatibility**\**
If you find an issue with a specific game, and tell flyinghead, 95% of the time its fixed, and released within hours. I don't know about you, but this is how I want my Dreamcast Emmulators to run. If you are looking for a fast plug and play, other emulators also do this, just not as well, but Flycast comes with emulated bios for users taht might just want a quick or very selective game play, but it IS ALWAYS RECOMENDED To use real bios.

WELL... I feel like my brain is about to pop, but I think I get it.

So, While it is hard to say sometimes, what is "better" for YOU mean? Do you want a more realistic, originaly accurate, game play? Do you have a machine that SHOULD be able to play in this mannor? This right here is the biggest thing people dont understand. If you see most users talking positive, adn you play on a device and its not good, why would you think that emulator is at fault? IT IS YOU AND YOUR DEVICE! Did you know vulkan and MALI gpus ( which are showing up more and more in phones and mobile devices) go together like hotsauce, orange juice, and milk? If you are having a bad time, something isnt right, ask for help here, in the discord chan, or on the github, and we will help solve your issue. I hope you enjoyed the read, and have a great day.

Is “bulk or nothing” an aspect of the shadow function? Like, “I might be good at this thing but wow I’m so inconsistent”? While inferior might be “wow i suck at this thing that i consistently interact with”?
A couple examples:
I want to be consistent with journaling (like daily habit tracking). And consistent with organizing details about my life (like captioning photos with what made that day meaningful, or how something was so funny it made me cry and that’s why I took a photo of it, etc).
I’m very meticulous and put a lot of thought into those things when I do them, but I find that most days I just can’t, leaving me to have to fill in the gaps and do everything in large time blocks when I eventually feel like it, instead of being consistent every day.
Like, I’ll remember that I took my vitamins and how today made me feel, but right now I’d rather do anything else than write about it. I’ll just note how special today was when I feel like it, hopefully next week or something.
I could be wrong, but I’m assuming the above describes Si stuff. Si is my 8th function.

I am NOT the Original Poster. That is u/stellactqm. She posted in amiwrong
Thanks to Literally_Taken for the rec!
Mood Spoiler: schadenfreude; happy ending
Original Post: April 25, 2024
Title: Am I wrong for telling a classmate she doesn't own sci-fi?
I'm (21f) in university studying journalism. This semester, we have a creating writting class. One assignment is a free piece. We can write about whatever we want as long as it's 1500 words long and fictional.
We have a forum to post drafts of our stories and receive feedback from classmates. I posted a rough 1st draft of my story a few days ago. It's about a distant future where a small group of humans live on mars in a compound and believe they are alone in the universe, when in reality, they are subjects of an experiment. (I know, very original, but I was lacking inspiration and it was the first thing that popped into my mind).
I received an email from one of my classmates. I do not know that girl. I've seen her in class but have never interacted with her. She called me out for plagiarizing her work and cc'd the lecturer. I checked out her work in the forum and the only resemblance was that it took place in the future and in space. I answered her email saying that she doesn't own the sci-fi genre and linked both of our stories in the reponse.
We haven't heard from the lecturer yet, but she messaged me privately saying that I humiliated her in front of our lecturer and could get her penalized. Now I feel bad about it. I don't want her to not get her fair shot.
Was I wrong for saying this with the lecturer in copy?
Edit: typo
Update to answer some questions:
-No I did not look at her draft before writing mine. I never look at the forum before drafting because 1. I don't want to be influenced. 2. A lot of people are much better writers than I am and I don't want to feel discouraged.
-I didn't involve the lecturer. I answered her email in which he was already cc'd.
-The punishment for plagiarism is expulsion with academic penalty. Our university also uses an "anti plagiarism" software to compare our papers with existing material.
Hope this clarifies a few things.
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: NTA. She gets the lecturer involved and then complains that your reply is also CCd to them? What did she expect a. to achieve b. to happen?

OOP: I don't know. Maybe she genuinely thinks that I plagiarized her, and maybe I should apologize if that's the case. Honestly, if I believed someone had commited something as serious as plagiarism, I would also get the lecturer involved.

Commenter: Plagiarism is far more serious an issue than being embarrassed. F'off.

OOP: After seeing the responses I know that all of you are right. Wether she actually believes I plagiarized her or she was being malicious, plagiarism is a serious offense and it shouldn't be tossed around like that.

Commenter: You are not wrong you just defend yourself with evidence.

OOP: Hopefully the lecturer sees it that way too. Maybe the snarky wording was uncalled founnecessary

Commenter: NTA. But as a journalist of near 40 years, I'm confused as to why you have an assignment to write fiction?!

OOP: My degree is in Communication and my major is journalism, but we still get about one class per semester that isn't directly journalism related. For example, last year, I had to take a creative communication class where we explored different creative/unorthodox ways to communicate to different audiences and for various purposes. I like the diversity in the degree as it allows us to expand our horizon and be more open-minded.

Commenter: You did nothing wrong. The way she attacked you and “told on you” to the lecturer makes me wonder if she copied the story from someone’s else story and wanted to get ahead of it by trying to make it look like you stole her story. Just a thought.

OOP: Oh I did not think of that. I don't think she would risk being expelled though but that's an interesting train of thought

Update (Same Post): April 26, 2024 (Next Day)
Thank you all for your messages, it made me realize that hurting her feelings is not nearly as bad as accusing (especially falsely) someone of plagiarism. Thanks also to the people who made very funny comments.
I haven't heard back from the lecturer but I did receive another message from the girl. She told me that I ruined her life and never to contact her again or else. I haven't responded to either messages but took some of your advice and screenshoted the conversation for proof in case I need it. I don't know what she meant by that but I have a feeling I'll find out since our class together is on Monday.
Update Post: April 29, 2024 (4 days from OG post)
Hello all.
So I posted a few days ago. The post is titled "Am I wrong for telling my classmate she doesn't own sci-fi?" A few people asked for an update so here it is.
To summarize very quickly, we both wrote sci-fi stories for a creative writing class. They are nothing alike, except for the setting. She accused me of plagiarism in an email with our lecturer in copy and I answered with both of our stories linked saying she doesn't own the sci-fi genre. She replied to me privately saying that I embarassed her with my comment.
So to the update:
She sent me a private message a couple of days ago saying that I ruined her life and to never contact her again, "or else".
Yesterday was our class together and she wasn't there. However I could see the two girls she usually sits and hangs out with giving me the stink eye. I figured she must have told them.
After class, I went to see my professor and asked him about the email because, frankly, I was still worried. He said that he read both stories over the weekend and I have nothing to worry about. He also advised me to never have any other comunication with my classmate. I, half-jokingly and half-seriously, told him I wasn't planning to, especially after she basically threatened me. He asked me what I was talking about so I showed him the message. He asked that I send this to him and the ethics committee's email! I did so when I went home.
I heard some chatter throughout the day and our entire class received an email about cheating and plagiarism. As it turns out, she plagiarized her story! Her sister had written the story when she was in university a few years back and she had stolen it and submitted it as her own, thinking no one would notice as it had been a certain number of years. Well, after the incident, our lecturer used the anti-plagiarism software on our stories and found out about her cheating. Her situation is now being assessed by the ethics committee. She could be expelled.
I don't know why she flipped this on me. Maybe it was projection? Or she wanted someone else to take the blame? Anyway, I'm off the hook and will promptly forget about her.
Thanks everyone for your kind and eye-opening comments and advice, it was a nice read. Hope y'all a wonderful life.
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: It baffles me to think what she was expecting when accusing you! Anyway, you did right and that is all that shoud matter to you...

OOP: I don't know. I've been thinking about it and the only thing that makes sense would be that she thought I would get blamed instead of her or I would get penalized for plagiarism and people would not notice hers. But even that is a stretch...

Commenter: Anti-plagiarism software has been in use for more than a decade, now, and it has become quite a powerful tool. Obviously, writing created for any specific university or college will be available for search. The majority of plagiarism at higher education institutions is committed by students submitting well-graded work from a student that previously took that class. It surprises me that any university student wouldn't know that.

OOP: Honestly, I'm not even sure how it works. All I know is that when I submit any type of written work, I receive an automatic email telling me how much my work is similar to other material in percentage.

Commenter: I think that the cheating classmate checked out the rest of the class, saw that your story had a similar theme, panicked that the basic similarities would instigate a plagiarism investigation and then tried to get out in front of it. Probably hoping that the teacher would see it was a baseless claim and leave it at that, therefore both stories would be deemed original.

OOP: That's another possibility. Some people in the comments have suggested others. I guess we'll never know

Commenter: Pure projection. Get your story out about how you were accused of plagiarism when she was the one doing it. You don't want her "friends" to control the narrative.

OOP: Honestly, I don't really care about that. My "social life" at the university is pretty much non existent. I almost exclusively hang out with people outside of the university. The ethics committee will decide her faith and that's the only opinion that matters.
(to the next comment) Lol sorry about that, I clearly meant fate. English is not my first language and they kinda sound similar.

Some comments from OhNoConsequences where OOP also posted:
Commenter: For future reference, whenever someone is loudly accusing you of doing something, you can bet money they are doing it. This happened with your plagiarism that she did. I read a lot of posts where relationship cheaters do the same thing.

OOP: Yeah, some people suggested it on my original post but I didn't believe it given that the penalty is SOOOOO high. I was wrong, some people are both malicious and stupid.

Commenter: I would be genuinely upset if they didn't expel her.

OOP: I don't honestly care. I am pretty sure I will never interact with that person ever again. She is facing the consequences of her own actions and knowing I'm off the hook is enough for me. The ethics committee will decide her fate.

​

I noticed that A LOT of comedians seem to be shifting from "pure comedy" to embrace more drama into their work, or even just use comedy as an introduction for a show that is mostly about drama.
There are many examples:

• Please like me (2013) starts as a funny sugary comedy and when you realize it is talking A LOT about death and mental health and you found yourself bursting into tears
• Rick and Morty (2013) it also started as this silly cartoon with clever premises then starts talking about the consequences of your choices and death and grief
• Bojack Horseman (2014) seems a silly cartoon that follows a sort of "Two and a Half Men" character only to become REALLY dark and make you face your own monster
• Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (2018) - which is also an actress casted in Please Like Me - is a stand up that openly talk about things often avoided and leaves you with a bittersweet taste in your mouth (much more bitter than sweet tho)
• Succession (2018) is heavily packed with writters who also wrote Veep. It contains a monty-python level of satire, and yet it is still seen and sold as a "drama" and isn't afraid of talking about drama either
• White Lotus (2021), similarly, is also extremely comedic but still sold as "drama"
• Human Resources (2022), the Big Mouth spin-off. Big Mouth was alreay REALLY good at tackling some deep stuff, but Human Resources go even further talking about grief and things that are so dark I have no idea how they were approved by the studio (yet, they were so good at make it light that you don't even notice the darkness of that very powerful scene)
• Baby Reindeer (2024): written, directed and performed by a comedian, nonetheless one of the darkest and most uncomfortable shows I have ever seen (I mean that as a compliment)

It seems that comedians are REALLY good in talking about dark human experiences, but only decided to do so after 2013. This sort of genre seems to be at its peak right now. Am I wrong? If not, why did this happen only now?
Edit: as concise_pirate concisely pointed out on the comments, this was common in movies, but still, not on TV. I know that certainly there are SOME examples before 2013, but apart from Please Like Me, all these shows got on the list of most watched shows at their streaming service at some point. So even if there were a few examples here and certain, there certainly seems to be a more recent and intense pattern toward this trend.

Hello good people of Watts Island. I’m back to talk a little about Shanann’s friends and do something akin to ‘Who were they and where are they now?”
The idea behind this post came from “Beyond the Headlines: The Watts Family Tragedy” that I recently watched on YouTube. I have much to say about these interviews and the narrative that was and is forced on the public regarding Shanann and her relationship with Chris.
So, let’s get into it.
The Watts Family Tragedy Includes Never-Before-Seen Footage Beyond The Headlines Special LMN
Maybe some of you have seen this before and maybe some have not, me included. I came across this just a few nights ago and I feel there are some things that could be addressed. A “set the record straight” if you will. I figured that we would use this opportunity to talk about these women who call Shanann their “friend”, their connection to her and what has happened in their lives since this crime made them semi-famous.
Most of you know that I have researched this crime relentlessly. I have learned a lot about the people involved. I also became very familiar with the business of MLM’s and the dichotomy that exists in the friendships that develop within them. It’s all very, very interesting. After reading all of this, go back and rewatch the above video once again. It has a performance vibe to it. Shanann’s gruesome demise brought fame and glory to Thrive and its promoters and many of them still use their connection to her to bring in sales. We will get into that later.
The main characters to discuss in this video are:
Cristina Meacham, Cassandra Rosenberg, Cindy Derossett, and CBI Agent Tammy Lee. We will touch on Mr Rourke and Mr. Wrenn but this is about the women and their connection to Shanann. There is also a news reporter featured in the show but she is a paid talking head, so not of interest to me. She is merely the messenger of the narrative. She did not actually construct it. However, she had a big part in pushing it out into the world.
On with the show…
I want to start with Cristina Meacham. Before I give you my thoughts on her interview, I want to say that the loss of her husband, Deloye (DJ) is a tragedy and I feel for her and her daughter.
DJ was a retired US military serviceman. He was a certified diving instructor and owned his own recreational diving company in Hawaii called Deco Divers. On October 13, 2023, just two days after Cristina returned from Puerto Rico where she had attended the funeral of her grandmother, DJ passed away from complications that occurred while he was diving in shallow water. He suffered from some sort of emergency while in the water and died as a result. He was 53.
The Meacham’s appeared to have had a good marriage if you believe what’s on social media. But we all know that things aren’t always what they seem. That’s neither here nor there. Cristina and Nickole Atkinson have always seemed the most genuine of Shanann’s “friend group” (their words not mine.) Cristina struck me as honest. Yes, she is a hunbot. Yes, she does participate in an MLM. But she doesn’t sell the fake lifestyle like Shanann did. At least, not as aggressively.
I think the two women were close. Talking on the phone everyday. Brainstorming on how to coax more suckers into promoting Thrive. But Cristina’s livelihood didn’t hinge on building a bigger downline. Shanann had quit her job and Chris’ paycheck didn’t begin to cover their basic expenses.
Back in 2015, while Shanann was still working and making decent pay, money was extremely tight. The house payment alone absorbed over half of his monthly salary. After utilities, car insurance, minimum credit card payments, Shanann’s shopping habits, clothing and food, the Watts were well into the red. Shanann juggled the bills each month in order to try and keep them afloat. But it didn’t work and in June of that same year, the Watts filed for bankruptcy protection.
By Chris’ account, he was floored by the need to file bankruptcy. Shanann had complete control over their finances. She insisted and Chris wasn’t one to tell her ‘no.’ She chose to marry him, in part, because of that little fact. Chris was easily pushed around by his wife. He was conflict avoidant by nature. Combine that and his fear of Shanann’s italian temper and you have a recipe for financial disaster.
By the time summer of 2018 had rolled around their money problems were significantly worse. Shanann no longer worked that decent paying job. The girls were now enrolled full time at Primrose to the tune of $500 per week. Still, Shanann would pump hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars a month into promoting Thrive. This meant that the house payment would go unpaid for months at a time and/or only partial payments were made. The HOA had filed suit against the Watts for unpaid dues that stretched back more than a year.
Shanann knew that things had gotten to the breaking point where money was concerned. She used deceptive tactics to draw friends and family into the Thrive pyramid scheme. Maybe this is why Cristina Meacham always appeared genuine to me. Her sales pitch didn’t have the desperation behind it like Shanann’s. I suspect that the majority of the women promoting Thrive were in the same predicament as Shanann. Trying to keep a roof over their families heads is hard when your fake lifestyle soaks up all of the money. They continue to throw money at the Thrive monster in order to keep up appearances in hopes that some poor schmuck will fall for the same tired sales pitch and go all in on promoting the product. Downlines on downlines on downlines. It’s impossible for someone like Shanann to make this MLM business structure lucrative. It’s not going to happen. Most huns see it fairly quickly and this is why most of these “sales consultants” LOL actually throw in the towel in the first 6 months. The super hunbots with delusions of grandeur sacrifice everything they and their partner have built in pursuit of the life they “deserve” despite it being completely unrealistic. These women build teams of lovebombing stepford wives, all of which are hell bent on clawing their way to the top of the pyramid.
With this dynamic at play in all MLM’s it’s hard to know if the relationships between hunbots are legitimate or if they are a product of the MLM. Cristina may have been “close” to Shanann but in the MLM game that doesn’t necessarily equate to genuine friendship.
Let’s keep it real. Cristina was in the front row of the Shanann Show more than once. The first week and half of August 2018 had Cristina in the trenches. Shanann texted her literally day and night spouting hateful accusations at Ronnie and Cindy Watts. Followed by prolonged rants on why Chris didn’t want to touch her or talk to her. Cristina could surely see why Chris may have been upset with his wife. Anyone with any semblance of normalcy could read those text messages and see that Shanann was not a supportive or caring wife. She wanted her husband to choose her side in a battle she orchestrated against his family. A highly disordered personality has to be the culprit.
Cristina is used in the voiceover during the intro of the show. She speaks in a strange tone that I hadn’t heard from her before. I have watched an embarrassing amount of this woman’s social media content and believe me when I say that this voice is new.
Cristina has a lot to say about who Shanann was and while I don’t believe that their friendship was anything rock solid, I do think that Cristina knew Shanann better than anyone else outside of her husband and family.
Cristina was starting to get a picture of the real Shanann, though. The text exchanges between Shanann and Cristina during July and August 2018, were eye opening to me. I have read and reread some of those messages and found myself shaking my head in disbelief. Shanann was not a nice person. Cristina has had years to mull over the details. She didn’t seem comfortable with the way Shanann was treating her husband and in-laws. Her responses to Shanann’s vitriol are interesting. They suggest to me that after spending eight weeks at Saratoga Trail and watching Shanann in her element, Cristina was seeing things for what they were. Shanann wanted to be in control. If her wants and needs weren’t met, there was going to be a problem. She was a bully and a…bitch honestly. Cristina resorted to the obligatory head nodding after her initial attempts to encourage Shanann to be calm and level-headed failed miserably.
While Cristina and Koral were in Colorado in late summeearly fall of 2017. Shanann was in the throes of Thrive and most of us know what that entailed.
Shanann had quit her job at the hospital to Thrive full time. The girls were dropped off at daycare at approximately 7 am each weekday morning, where they stayed for nine plus hours. Chris was sent to retrieve them after his twelve hour shift ended at Anadarko. He brought them home where he was tasked with bathing, feeding, brushing teeth, administering meds, and reading bedtime stories, before putting them to bed by 6:30 pm. Shanann would often make Chris perform live for her Facebook friends in addition to his nightly dad duties. Giving piggyback rides on camera. Dutifully obeying his wife's demands to do pushups and squats with screaming children clutching his neck and head. All of this is punctuated by being the punchline to all of Shanann’s not-so-funny, mean jokes. The laundry was always waiting patiently for his attention after the girls were put to bed. Sometimes even the dishes were on his list of things to do before he was allowed to rest after his long day.
Cristina knows all of this. She was right in the thick of the action, so to speak. Not only was she a witness to this unequaled dynamic but she also utilized Shanann’s beast of burden herself on many occasions, as he was also a great babysitter. Cristina trusted Chris, once upon a time. Trusted him so much that she would leave her toddler in his care while she and Shanann took a weekend trip to Las Vegas. She also left Koral with Chris several nights per week. Shanann and Cristina went to dinners, movies, bars, etc while Chris stayed at home with both of his toddlers and Cristina’s as well. He didn’t even have access to a vehicle during these times. What kind of man would put up with that kind of treatment? A nice man. A genuinely nice man. That’s who Chris was and Cristina Meacham knows it.
Her knowledge of what their marriage was really like behind the doors on Saratoga Trail is the reason why Cristina doesn’t shed one real tear in the above video. Look closely. No tears. Her voice lifts and squeaks as though it is full of confusion and emotion but there’s no there, there. Performative.
Cristina knows that Chris was an excellent father and husband until that day in August. She also knows that Shanann pushed and pushed and pushed. It was her way or no way at all.
They use a few of Shanann’s text messages as proof of her broken heart after Chris began to pull away but what they don’t show is the manipulation and abuse that filled the other 99% of her texts during that same time period. The way that Shanann spoke about her husband and his family in text messages she sent to Cristina Meacham during the summer of 2018 shows the real, down and dirty deal. It is more than obvious from Cristina’s replies to those messages that she knew Shanann was full of hatred and malice toward Chris’ parents and sister. Hell, not even his young niece and nephew were safe from Shanann’s vitriol. It’s not as if Cristina hadn’t been privy to that side of Shanann. She had seen it firsthand. This is why Cristina cries with dry eyes.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe that Cristina is affected by the loss of someone who was a big part of her life in the final two years leading up to the murders. But what you can’t convince me of is that Cristina truly believes that Shanann was the living, breathing angel that she is portrayed to have been.
If there is anyone outside of Shanann and Chris' respective families who saw who Shanann really was, it’s Cristina Meacham.
Cristina ruminates on the atrocities that Chris committed that August morning. Strangely though, she leaves the girls out of their own murder. It’s quite obvious that the point of this whole thing is to shove that same old narrative down our throats. That Shanann was an angel and Chris is the devil. They pushed this on the public from the day that Chris was arrested. There was no investigation. No defense team to pull the skeletons out of the closet and dust them off for the world to see. No friends or family of Chris were given a platform to tell their truth. Nope. It was and still is the “Shanann Show.” Propagated by the Weld county DA’s office, the Rzucek family and the powers that be at LeVel.
Cristina’s description of Shanann is a caricature. Maybe this is why the tears just aren’t there. She calls Shanann a good person and a good wife to Chris. Would a good wife insist that her husband cut all ties with his parents for the 2nd time in six years? Do good people use Facebook as a weapon against their in-laws? Does a good wife heap all of the childcare and chores on her husband every evening after he worked a 12 hour shift? While she sat at home and spent money that they simply did not have? These are just small examples of the shit that Shanann put Chris through. We won’t even talk about how she separated Chris from his family and friends through manipulation and deceit. She made sure that he had no life outside of the house on Saratoga Trail. Even his position at Anadarko was for Shanann’s benefit. His work as a mechanic just didn’t fit into her vision for him. How can she call Shanann a good person when she was well aware that Shanann used her children as leverage against the people that loved them? It’s honestly disgusting.
If Cristina was such a close friend of Shanann’s, why didn’t she speak up and tell her that the way she treated her husband was wrong? Cristina had the chance to bring some truth and clarity to the situation while Shanann and Chris were still in North Carolina? The way that Shanann insulted and degraded her husband and his family was shameful. Cristina never once spoke up to bring Shanann back down to earth. That’s not a real friend.
Let’s talk about Cassie Rosenberg. Oh, Cassie, Cassie, Cassie. Shanann’s champion and “best friend.” Cassie is one of those people that were made for MLM’s and the like. Opportunistic but likable and empathetic. She dove into Thrive, head first. Just like Shanann. She was fresh off of a foreclosure and feeling low when Thrive rescued her and her husband, Josh from a life of boredom and laziness.
Shanann and Cassie met around November of 2017. Cassie lived in Arizona with her husband Josh and their three children. Stair step in ages. Two girls and one boy if I remember right. Not really sure as the Rosenberg children didn’t get the screen time that Bella and Celeste were forced to endure. Then again, Cassie had an actual career. She is an RN and therefore worked during the day instead of sitting at home and playing on her phone.
Cassie and Shanann instantly clicked during their initial meeting. Cassie had been part of Shanann’s invisible audience by way of her involvement in Thrive. Cassie was drawn to Shanann’s Thrive celebrity so to speak. Cassie was new to LeVel when the murders occurred.
Then there’s Cindy Derossett. She is another Thriver. She also lives in Arizona. Cindy is a LeVel millionaire recipient who owns a small boutique in Queen Creek, AZ. She has been with LeVel for 10 years.
So, here we have three of Shanann’s fellow Thrivers speaking about her character, pushing out the agreed upon narrative to the public. There are so many things wrong with this and it’s difficult to pick a place to start.
Why were these women chosen for this program? I understand that Cristina Meacham was probably the closest thing Shanann had to a real friend. Even though their friendship was transactional, Cristina knew Shanann for fourteen years. Even if you didn’t count the twelve years that they didn’t see one another, Cristina was still Shanann’s oldest friend. Yes, that’s correct. While Shanann had hoards of acquaintances that she would eventually pester to join the Thrive experience, she had no close friends before she joined LeVel.
Back to the question of why these particular women were chosen to represent who Shanann was in life…I believe they were the only people who would or could give the public what it wanted; a tragic main character that propagated sympathy.
Cassie wonders whether we ever really “know” someone else. She questions how Chris could commit such a horrible act without showing any signs of what was to come.
Of course it’s possible to truly “know” others. However, Cassie barely knew Chris. It hadn’t even been a full year since she had initially met Shanann face to face. Trips they took with LeVel were their only physical interactions with one another until the Rosenbergs popped up in Colorado during that holiday weekend in 2018. Of course Cassie didn’t know Chris and truthfully she barely knew Shanann.
Cindy began her “friendship” with Shanann on Facebook. Cindy was a Thriver from way back and she was introduced to Shanann by Addy Maloney.
Cindy, who calls herself a “spiritual coach” and motivational speaker, is an accomplished lovebomber. If you didn’t know better you would think that Cindy Derossett had been an integral part of the lives of Shanann and the girls. She had never actually met either of Shanann’s daughters. Cindy would see Chris on the LeVel trips but that was the extent of her relationship with him. She barely knew this family and yet, here she is on television speaking about them as though she were some kind of authority on who they were.
Both Cassie and Cindy agree that everyone that met Shanann couldn’t help but be her friend. If that were true then why was it that Shanann had no friends to speak of before joining Thrive? Sure, Shanann knew a lot of people and she would often refer to them as “friends” but in reality Shanann couldn’t maintain anything deeper than a surface level connection. Interpersonal relationships couldn’t be sustained.
She was engaging and fun on the surface but that would change as the relationship progressed. There were no friends outside of Thrive. Even the women she met before she started Thrive were eventually used to expand her downline.
While reading the text messages between Shanann and her circle, it’s obvious that each of these relationships were centered around Shanann. It was her problems that were discussed. It was her accomplishments that were celebrated. Every conversation was dictated by whatever it was that Shanann had going on in her life. Shanann surrounded herself with empathetic people in order to exploit them. Like Chris.

Cassie and Cindy are asked to describe Bella and Cece. I, myself, who have never met those children, would have done better. Their answers are full of platitudes that have been repeated over and over for the last five years. Neither of them say anything heartfelt about the girls. 

This is because Cindy had never met either Bella or Celeste. She saw via Shanann’s facebook posts but she had never actually been in the same room with them.
Cassie had only met the Watts girls once. This was in May of 2018 when the Rosenbergs traveled to Colorado for a local that Shanann was hosting. The family of 5 spent the Memorial Day weekend with the Watts on Saratoga Trail.
Both girls spent 9 hours a day, five days a week at daycare. They were in bed by 6:30 every evening.
On the weekends, Chris kept the kids out of Shanann’s hair so she could “run with her amazing team.”
So when exactly did Cassie and Cindy spend enough time with Bella and Cece that would constitute them being asked to speak about them post mortem??
At first I didn’t get it. It took a moment or two for me to catch on to why these people were invited to tell their story. People that didn’t really know them.
Then it clicked. This entire production was about Shanann.
This show aired for the first time in 2020. Just about the time that this case was generating renewed interest for different reasons.
Two years had passed since the murders occurred. Plenty of time to read and reread the discovery. Shanann’s facebook videos were compiled on YouTube channels and sent out to the morbidly curious. Like myself. Two years it took for people to begin to question the narrative. Was Shanann an innocent victim in this crime? Was she a good wife and mother who was married to a monster?
Or, was there something else to see here?
These women were brought into this case by way of their MLM connection to Shanann but they have remained as main characters to push the narrative. They have told us that Shanann was everything right in the world and Chris killed her because he was a cheating, lying piece of shit.
While some of you may believe all of that to be true, there are those of us who dug deeper into the lives of the Watts family leading up to the murders and what we have found flipped the case upside down. It’s the reason that this case remains in the front row of the true crime cases that we can’t let go.
The has-it-all image Shanann presented on social media was a dissimilation. Behind closed doors she had created an environment filled with intense levels of stress for her family.
Chris and the girls lived in constant apprehension. Creating a perfect picture for the outside world had become a responsibility for this family and anyone that threatened it would be discounted. Shanann’s selfishness caused uncertainty, insecurity, depression and probably fear.
Cristina, Cassie and Cindy talk as though they had spent considerable time with them when in fact they had not.
Truthfully, they barely knew Shanann. The amazing mom and wife that they were acquainted with was a veneer and the lifestyle that she showed off on social media was a sham. Nothing but a simulation of the life she dreamed of having.
Pay attention to what it is that they are saying and not saying about Shanann. Their characterization of her is anecdotal. The entire vibe is disingenuous and insipid.
Cristina insists that Shanann was a go-getter and was determined to create the best life for her family. But is that really true? Is that what she was attempting to achieve? Or was she hung up on material things? People who spend their families into financial ruin aren’t caring for them properly. Sliding into a second bankruptcy and a foreclosure on their home so that she could keep up the traveling, wealthy, suburban mom facade isn’t what I would call “trying to create the best life for her family.” Her vision board was a testament to her mindset. Yachts, beach houses, the list goes on and on. Someone with this kind of juvenile thinking isn’t what I would call a “go-getter.”
Cindy claims Shanann taught her girls how to love. Again, how would Cindy know this to be true? Teaching them to love? By fostering a golden child/scapegoat dynamic between them? By encouraging them to throw their food at their dad when they were displeased or impatient? How about when she screamed at their Mimi that they would never step foot in their grandparents home again?
Was it love she was teaching them when she dressed them up in lovely clothes every year to sit on Santa’s lap and find entertainment in their terror and distrust?
But most importantly of all…was she teaching them to love when she subjected them to her own sadistic form of Babywise from the minute they were born? Leaving them alone in their cribs to cry-it-out?
Cindy says when Shanann posted videos to Facebook, it was their “joy” to watch. It was likely they were required to watch by their MLM leaders.
Cassie calls Shanann “captivating” but all I saw was the exploitation of her children.
The reporter even dodges the facts by claiming that Shanann’s “main job” was as a consultant for a nutritional supplement company. There’s no way that this educated woman doesn’t know that Shanann was participating in an MLM. A pyramid scheme does not equate to a “main job.” Mostly because that “main job” doesn’t actually pay you for your work.
We will continue my reaction to Beyond the Headlines: The Watts Family Tragedy, later this week. I have a lot to say.
Thanks for reading.
Del

TLDR: Stephanie gets too much hate lately and I like her for being a strong and opinionated female who takes no shit from people. I am just going to say this and take the heat from the people who seem to really dislike or even despise Stephanie lately. Right at the start of the pandemic , I started getting into a bunch of different true crime YouTubers, and she was one of the first I stumbled upon. Right away, I enjoyed her research, her storytelling capabilities and yes, her snark and sarcasm. Eventually watching her show led me to CW, and honestly, it took me a long time to warm up to and like Derrick-who everyone seems to LOVE!! At first I didn’t get all the love for him and I actually thought he was conceited and a little bit of a know it all, and his personality bothered me for at least the first three cases. I think it just took them a bit to find a groove. Looking back now, I also think Derrick was new to the whole podcast thing. Now they have such a great rapport and funny interactions. I throughly enjoy both of them and also love Derrick’s new venture, Detective Perspective. But, back to SH, because I just see so much hate here and on the channel directed at her and I wanted to speak up and not necessarily defend her, but try to see if there’s any other fans of CW who share my take on this. Also, because I’m honestly confused by all of the hate Stephanie gets. In my opinion, I really believe that if she were a man, but acted the exact way that she does on her channel and on CW, she wouldn’t get the hate. In fact, I think she’d be praised for being cute, funny and witty. I think she would get a lot more forgiveness for her faults and her behaviors that people point out, if she were not a woman. And let’s face it, many of the haters, if not most, are other women, which honestly isn’t surprising, considering women are known for cutting each other down. But in general, I think both men and women are threatened by females with strong personalities like she has. She’s opinionated for sure, and I haven’t always agreed with her take on things. In fact, I’ve called her out on comments on the channel a few times. One example was when they covered the DeOrr Kuntz case and she commented that it seemed unbelievable that DeOrr’s mom didn’t know she was getting her period and wasn’t prepared with pads or tampons. Every female I know has been unprepared for a surprise period. It pissed me the heck off that she used that as a reason to suspect the Mom. But I can disagree with her opinions or things she says or does sometimes without absolutely ripping her apart. I’m just wondering why all the hate? I appreciate that she is victim centric, that she tells us little things about herself to make her relatable. And, sure she’s quirky and has some annoying habits, the playing with slime has to stop, but I feel there are very few true crime YouTubers who dive so deep into every little aspect of a case. I always find her stories to be well researched, the timelines always presented in a clear way. Plus, her voice and story telling keeps you wanting to hear more, where other people jump around and feel impossible to follow (looking at you Kimbyrleigha ) or who speak as though they are robotic (hey Rachel Shannon)-I can listen to Stephanie and not get bored or feel like I’m lost. So this is my rant or whatever. Don’t come for me. Or do. I don’t care. I just felt compelled to share my seemingly unpopular opinion.

Okay so yesterday my friend's boyfriend made fun of my height cuz i am 5 feet 1 inches.. And i took it normally in a funny way but then he commented on round face.. He mocked me for having round face.. To which i really felt bad.. I was sad that my friend didn't even stop her boyfriend she let him make fun of my insecurities.. Like for example my boyfriend can not even dare to say something wrong to my best friend cuz he knows how i will react to it.. And yesterday's incident has really affected me to core now... I haven't slept the whole night thinking about my looks and my insecurities... I may be way too sensitive for some people but yes i cannot take mockery on my looks.. I just need some people to tell me... What subliminal i should listen to.. So that i can deal with these things.. And can come up with good reply..

Hey OE folks,

I OE’d for ~8 months. Honestly changed my life despite the short amount of time. Debts were being paid off, savings were growing wonderfully, things were looking great for the family, etc. Then, I lost J2 due to an unforeseen layoff. I've been sad, frustrated, angry, and of course... missing the money. I’m back in hardcore search mode for J2 again.

I happen to have a few friends who are also OE. Two of them work in the same industry, and have highly similar education and work experience. They are managers at their respective companies. They both also happened to be hiring managers for roles that opened up around the same time. They hired each other. That's right, they are each other's bosses at their J2s.

Now, imagine YOU are a hiring manager. Sure, you can also be in a position to influence the hiring decision (maybe you refer someone, or maybe you're an interviewer), but ideally, you're the actual hiring manager. Now imagine you meet someone else just like this.

Introducing... Hire for Hire. You're both aware that you're looking to be OE. You're both in the same industry. You both qualify for each other's open roles. You get each other hired. You both OE knowing you're each other's bosses. You help each other, build a ton of experience, maybe become friends, and of course, you start building wealth (why else are we all interested in OE?)

And, what about those who are not in a position to trade in a Hire for Hire? For example, myself. I'm currently not hiring at the moment, so I can't trade for an open role. Instead, I'd want to make a deal with one of you OE folks: you hire me and I'll give you X% of my J2 salary. Call it Hire for %? Idk. But this can also be a killer way for both parties to partake in a Hire for Hire-like situation.

Now, I'm sure l over-simplified the idea and process. There are probably some ways this can backfire: perhaps you don't get along with each other, maybe one of you gets laid off, etc.

But, with the right combination of people, mindsets, companies, and job functions, I think it'd be awesome to see this in action, especially within this group. We should all help each other, outside of just sharing stories and offering advice on Reddit.

So... I'll start first, lol: if you're hiring for a role (any industry) within the functions of customer support/success, internal ops, ops management (or related), consider hiring me, because:

I have a great mix of education and experience: top 10 public university grad + worked for the government and some hot startups.

High EQ, no drama, no-nonsense. I can put my head down and quietly get work done. I can be serious and take charge. I can be funny and extroverted when needed. I fit almost any work environment and culture.

I have years of both management and IC experience. I operate with an entrepreneurial mindset. I know what you need from your direct reports.

Money, duh. Once hired, I'll give you an ongoing cut of my salary. I'm sure we can find a number we both like, and there are many ways to get you paid.

Curious to read your initial thoughts on the concept of Hire for Hire. Thanks for reading!

TL;DR: OE folks should hire each other. And someone please hire me, lol.

P.S: ignore my post history. This was posted for my friends behalf as his account does not meet the requirements to post in this subreddit. Thank you.

I recently replayed the three games from the Apollo Justice Trilogy (typo in the title), and I ranked them all as I went along. It was just for fun, but I wanted to share them here in case anyone wanted to discuss the cases. It’s a lot of text, and being nerdy about Ace Attorney lol.
Ace Attorney: Case Ranking(May 5, 2024)
No.1 Turnabout Revolution A beast of a case, encompassing the resolution of three different cases in one twelve hour long episode! I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t a satisfying conclusion; the game’s mysteries come to a dramatic head in the trial as the final villain’s breakdown cements the end to a very long case. The stakes are infinitely high here, as the nation’s future and the lives of his comrades rests squarely on Apollo’s shoulders.
The only way they could have been higher is for it to have been a world ending case! Anyways, this case was a ride, the reveal of Dhurke’s death was possibly the saddest twist in the entire series, and executed much better than Clay Terran’s death. Investigating the cave with Dhurke was like an adventure, although the civil trial part of this case felt flawed with the murder and Phoenix’s blackmail. Rayfa’s arc was brought to a close, with a couple more reveals about her family. This was an insane undertaking for a case, and although there are some length and pacing issues, this ended Spirit of Justice on a high note.
No.2 The Magical Turnabout A perfect second case, Trucy truly shines in this episode. She gets fleshed out in a way the fourth game failed to do, raising my opinion of her by a substantial margin. My only complaint is that she bordered on Mary Sue here. Her testimony was uniquely formatted, and cornering Retinz was cathartic. The music is great, especially Mr. Reus’s theme.
The mystery is engaging and well-paced, with a fabulous setup as well. It got emotional with Trucy questioning herself, and dramatic with the seizure of the office. The Magical Turnabout hit every note right on the head, it being 1 trial day 1 investigation was to its benefit. The only annoying part was dusting the coffin for prints, but that’s a minor gripe with an overall phenomenal case that shows their potential to make great standalone cases.
No.3 Turnabout Reclaimed The DLC case of Dual Destinies, and who knew it would be this good? You start out defending an orca, an awesome premise, before it devolves into unraveling all the drama of Shipshape Aquarium. The characters are great and multi-dimensional, especially the culprit.
It was a heartbreaking tale with a hopeful ending. I’ve seen this case described as a better Turnabout Big Top, and I can see the logic there as they both take place in an entertainment circus-like setting. I’m impressed with how this case wrapped around and came full circle.
No.4 Turnabout for Tomorrow Picking up right where we left off from The Cosmic Turnabout, this finale is truly epic and conclusive. Black psyche locks, a spy, robots, space… it’s so cool! Plus, iconic characters such as Miles Edgeworth and Pearl Fey make a return in this case. This case takes some inspiration from Turnabout Goodbyes with the matricide/patricide drama. I will admit that some parts felt like they went on and on, but I loved seeing the Phantom conflict resolved.
The Phantom himself I have some gripes with, as I see how he could’ve been executed better. This case hits its emotional beats with Apollo’s doubt, Athena’s trauma and Aura’s brief appearance. Turnabout for Tomorrow delivered as a final case and did Athena and Blackquill justice.
No.5 Turnabout Trump Surprisingly great first case with bold plot twists and narrative decisions. It was shocking to have the disbarred Phoenix Wright as the defendant, starting off strong. Clever contradictions and good humor sets a sombre tone. The Borscht Bowl Club was an darker setting, the themes of cheating and betrayal executed excellently. Sets up interesting mysteries with unsatisfying conclusions in later cases, but a well-written mystery in and of itself.
No.6 Turnabout Succession The culmination of all the compelling mysteries of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney; simultaneously anticlimactic and great. Attempts novel ideas such as the Jury and MASON System, creating a unique experience. Phoenix’s disbarment and the Troupe Gramarye drama is unraveled, with somewhat lukewarm answers.
The forgery family, method of murder and revisiting an old trial set this case apart. Tends to drag and have inconsistencies, making it one of the worse final cases. While I have issues with the way this case resolves mysteries, it’s better than I remembered and I was hooked.
No.7 The Rite of Turnabout Another third case that’s blown away third case syndrome, and a case that I have a lot to say about. Maya and Phoenix finally reunite in Khura’in, only for her to be immediately arrested for the murder of the high priest. Bad pun names become especially apparent here, with the victim’s name being Tahrust Inmee and such. This case has wonderful ideas, but an equal amount of annoyances.
The Divination Séances were difficult, and not in a good way, with multiple tricky contradictions and contrivances throughout the trial. The first trial day just felt pointless, aside from introducing Datz. On the bright side, I enjoyed investigating with Rayfa, as she received a plethora of development and attention here, providing good entertainment for these long investigations. The story of the rebel couple touched me emotionally, and the suicide was a shocking twist. Unraveling the mystery and cross-examining the dead high priest felt satisfying, and I really liked the complexity and details of this case.
No.8 Turnabout Time Traveler A classic, lighthearted case that serves as a callback to the OG trilogy. There are a multitude of justified complaints for this case; the blatant flanderization of beloved characters, long animations, a dumb revisualization sequence, blatantly ignoring Athena, lack of music, and too few characters leading to an easy mystery.
This is a long list of flaws, but in the end, I love this charmingly simple murder mystery with its various twists. Love prevails, with a cute wedding sequence at the end. The focus on time is an interesting one, leading to various twists relating to being stuck in the past, and moving onto a brighter future. I had a great time with this romantic case.
No.9 Turnabout Academy A tale of a friendship trio all trying to defend each other for the murder of the academy’s professor, Constance Courte. I’m not a fan of the school setting, which basically completely changes how lawyers work in this universe. Reminds me of Turnabout Serenade with how the murder is based around a song/script, but better due to other factors.
While corny, I liked these characters and their relative twists; Hugh was particularly funny to me. The mock trial and investigation portion was a definite improvement from the previous case. The Dark Age of the Law spiel was especially prevalent and shallow in this case, which is one of its flaws. Playing as Athena was fun as she shone here.
No.10 Turnabout Corner Solid, winding case starting with a trio of crimes. A little all over the place, and has an uncomfortable amount of underwear mentions. Despite it being fairly forgettable, with no wow factor to elevate it, I don’t have many critiques as it was relatively painless and had entertaining characters.
Figuring out how Alita Talia was in the noodle stand was a nice twist, and I liked how it all connected together in the end. There were also touching moments with Wocky Kitaki having a bullet stuck inside him, and his father wanting to help him.
No.11 Turnabout Serenade A musical case that I and many others have conflicted feelings on, due in large part to poor pacing. Flaws range from annoying to downright illogical, for example, the pretenses under which the defendant, Machi Tobaye, was arrested.
However, there were entertaining aspects such as fiddling with the sound mixer and the concert setting. Exploring Klavier’s moody personality was interesting, as well as getting the know the Gavinners as a group. Great ideas, messy execution (goes for most of this game.)
No.12 The Cosmic Turnabout A natural rating for a case so oddly connected to the final case. Turnabout for Tomorrow is the superior case in every respect, leaving The Cosmic Turnabout anticlimactic yet still interesting in its own right. I didn’t mind Yuri Cosmos and actually found jhim more entertaining in a bleaker case. Funnily enough, Solomon Starbucks reminds me of Larry Butz.
The space setting is wonderful, as well as the circumstances surrounding the murder. Left off on a shocking reveal that built up excellent tension. I find Clay Terran to be underdeveloped, and he could’ve been a more interesting character in Apollo’s past rather than being hastily introduced and subsequently killed. Not much can be said that I’d rather put here than for the fifth case.
No.13 Turnabout Storyteller The filler case for Spirit of Justice. The dynamic between Athena and Blackquill is immaculate, they bounce off of each other well and I definitely want to see more of them in the future. Although, I didn’t like how Athena was treated as incompetent.
It’s unfortunate that Athena was sidelined in the middle of the two most plot relevant cases, it’s a real tone breaker. Her objection theme is the best in the series, I love the electric guitar. The side characters are alright, Uendo being the clear highlight with his multiple personalities. The mystery had some lame twists, but it was well thought out and I appreciate the levity.
No.14 The Monstrous Turnabout Tackles the supernatural with yokai, monsters, and superstition, which I can appreciate as a concept. Intriguing lore built around this village. Seemingly goes on forever, could’ve been corrected with one investigation and one trial.
The investigations we got were extremely streamlined, with a disappointing loss of not being able to search all the backgrounds anymore. A low point of Dual Destinies, twists feel hamfisted and characters like Jinxie are one-note. Nonetheless, a silly, harmless case.
No.15 The Foreign Turnabout Introduces us to the hostile country of Khura’in, in which lawyers are treated like the scum of the Earth. The mystery itself was nothing special, but being in this unfamiliar setting offset the actual crime. The culprit’s guitar playing testimonies were amusing and took attention away from the monotony of a case far too long, and was the highlight of this case.
The Divination Séance proved to be welcome as well, and I look forward to seeing how they go about implementing this in future cases. A good way to start Spirit of Justice, and not much else.
No.16 Turnabout Countdown Decent introduction to Dual Destinies, sees the return of lawyer Phoenix and our new character Athena Cykes. Has an interesting setup, new 3D models look nice and the cutscenes are a refreshing touch. Nothing wrong with this case, but doesn’t stand out aside from its connection to a later case.
Cluttered with intermissions in which Apollo gets attacked; a jarring shift of tone brings this case down. Not a bad case by any means, went slightly above expectations for a first case from the way the culprit fooled people into thinking he had the real bomb.
End

In the Rings of Power series, the character Adar is introduced and identified to be among the first Orcs ever created by Melko/Morgoth/Sauron, who created Orcs by kidnapping elves, twisting them and transforming them to start a new deformed race on Middle Earth. In the Lord of the Rings movies, Saruman creates the Uruk-hai using dark magic encapsulated within the physical ground. It is implied that he uses the framework of how Melko/Morgoth/Sauron creates leagues of modern Orcs to replicate their creation from stone and rock.
In The Book of Lost Tales (1917-1920), Melko is said to have created orcs from Earth, and that their hearts are "of granite" and their bodies are "deformed". Tolkein's writings do not confirm if the 1st generation of Orcs were made from corrupting, torturing and deform elves into Orcs and the writings do not confirm if subsequent generations of Orcs are created from dirt and stone.
I'd like to discuss evidence of this theory and others' thoughts about it. Any examples sourced in Tolkein texts, Rings of Power scenes, or recalled from the movies, I would like to hear if anyone observed other examples that further this theory?
For example, Adar has mangled elf ears and scars that imply he underwent torture and experimentation. Adar is also notably taller than the other Orcs, is pale like an elf, and demonstrates extreme paternal elf-like familial affection to the race of Orcs he perceives as his children.
In the Hobbit trilogy, Azog is notably taller than the other Orcs and his ears look funny to me. No other Orc is so tall, is pale like him or has ears that taper to such a dramatic point. Azog is remarkably smarter and more tactical in his thinking compared to other Orcs. Azog's son Bolg inherited his father's height, which could be an Elvish trait if Azog is a 1st generation Orc still surviving in Middle Earth thanks to his intelligence and obedience to Sauron. Bolg demonstrates higher functioning strategic thinking that stands out from other Orcs. Bolg is also very pale. The bond between Azog and Bolg seems close and different from how unattached the other Orcs seem to interact with each other. No family ties are ever mentioned between other Orcs.
I attached a picture of a scene I saw in a Hobbit movie, where Bolg is using a bow and arrow to attack Kili and the other dwarves. Bolg is tall, but the bow he is using looks so Elvish in its light colored wood design, I cannot stop seeing connections between Azog/Bolg having Elvish height, intelligence, and non-Orcish family loyalty.

Incredibly funny to me, possibly relatable to you INFP’s:
My daughter’s had 2 crushes thus far that she’s voiced: Black Ken (just “Ken” to her because she doesn’t know what “black” is) and Jake LaRavia (NBA player).
Idk if this jumps out on paper immediately to everyone but these are two people on the opposite extremes of their stereotypes: Ken is white 90% of the time. NBA players are black 90% of the time.
She has like 10 Ken dolls (ESTJ grandfather will not stop spoiling my children with toys). Only her black Ken is allowed in the Barbie house.
She discovered Jake LaRavia (again ESTJ grandfather spoils my children) because my son got some nba trading cards. After sorting through 200 cards, Jake LaRavia was the one she pulled out and said was her boyfriend. It’s also worth noting that mom pulled Jimmy Butler (black player) and said that he was her boyfriend.
The insistence of INFP’s to go against the grain is relatable to me but also very interesting because I appreciate the stubbornness of trying to make sure no one has an influence on the box you put yourself in as you discover it. At the same time, it’s just funny that her two crushes have been the polar opposite of the stereotype associated with their “characters.”
I love INFP’s and I am very jealous of your conscious sense of self. As an ISTP, I reject all things that go into “self” until I’ve had 3-5 business days to ruminate on it (even if it’s something I’ve always done). I’m humbled to have the privilege of raising one of your brains and hope I can do right by her as a father.
Thanks for reading!

Looking on the interwebs I couldn’t find a really good comprehensive list of curses that suited my game, so I made a list of 200. I’ve pulled some of these from other sources (such as reddit posts, youtube shorts, and so on), but the vast majority were from me going “wouldn’t it be funny if…”
Some of the curses have optional mechanical rules attached because I was asked to rule on them. Your mileage may vary (you’re obviously welcome to leave mechanical effects off altogether at your table). That said, I have a hard time believing the rogue can spot a pressure plate when the floor appears made of molten nacho cheese…
Enjoy! Hope you feel inspired and use some in your campaign or your curse tables.
Dreamfey Curses D100:
1 - All of your teeth fall out, and a tiny hand springs from your gums in each one's place. - If you cast a spell with verbal components, roll a d20. On a 5 or lower, the spell fails and is wasted.
2 - Your hair falls out and begins to rapidly regrow from your ears. - You suffer disadvantage on checks requiring hearing.
3 - You can no longer blink your eyes. - Disadvantage to vision checks.
4 - Your fingers become toes, and your toes become fingers. - Disadvantage on dexterity checks requiring fine motor control.
5 - You lay an egg, and are overwhelmed by the instinct to brood it. - If the egg hatches after 30 days, you gain a familiar. If it dies, you suffer disadvantage on charisma checks due to depression until the curse is removed.
6 - You can only speak in the scat style of song. - You are incomprehensible and cannot cast spells with verbal components.
7 - You laugh uproariously at anything sad or distressing. - Disadvantage on charisma checks in upsetting situations.
8 - You may only ingest things that are yellow. Any other color makes you violently ill. - Food and potions must be carefully considered. Water must be made yellow.
9 - Each time you laugh in real life, your character takes 1d4 damage.
10 - You believe yourself to be a spy working for the enemy, and are very bad at it.
11 - All livestock that see you want to be near you, and do their best to get as close to you as possible.
12 - You crave humanoid bones, and can only be satisfied by eating them.
13 - You cannot turn right. - Disadvantage on dexterity saving throws.
14 - You must loudly shout, "SURPRISE!" when walking through doorways.
15 - You become a pacifist. You can no longer intentionally attempt to deal lethal damage.
16 - Every time you have an even remotely romantic feeling, you become intensely nauseous. - DC 15 CON save or vomit, still look sick on success.
17 - You become intensely magnetic.
18 - You become incredibly beautiful, and must look in any mirror you encounter for at least one minute. - Advantage on seduction-based charisma checks.
19 - Every time you harm someone, even intentionally, you must apologize profusely.
20 - You cannot tell the difference between copper and gold.
21 - You may only speak in questions.
22 - You learn one random useless fact every morning, and can't stop thinking about it until you've told someone. - Automatic failure on concentration checks before disclosing fact.
23 - Your joints pop loudly whenever you move.
24 - Moths are fascinated by you.
25 - Your dreams are visible for others as small illusions above your head.
26 - Whenever anyone doubts you for any reason, you must answer with, "But I know magic!" - Disadvantage on deception checks.
27 - Whenever you hear someone utter a number under 100, you must count up to 100 from that number.
28 - When you walk through a door you forget what you were doing.
29 - Anything you drink takes on the consistency of yogurt. - DC 10 CON save each day to consume drink.
30 - All of your intentional movements are reversed--for example, attempting to move your right hand instead moves your left hand. - You automatically fail all dexterity checks and saves.
31 - You fall hopelessly in love with the next person you see, and actively pursue a long term relationship with them.
32 - You are now unfailingly polite and servile.
33 - You smell strongly of barbeque. - Disadvantage on stealth checks.
34 - You forget how to properly put on your armor, and it has a chance to simply fall off. - When hit by an attack, roll a d20. On a 1, your armor falls off.
35 - Whenever you see someone new who is not hostile, you must introduce yourself and kiss them on both cheeks.
36 - You become terrified of the sun. - Disadvantage on all checks, saves, and attack rolls when in direct sunlight.
37 - You can feel your parasitic twin attempting to assert control over your body at the worst times. - Enemies have advantage on attacks against you.
38 - You have the hiccups. Forever. - Disadvantage on concentration checks.
39 - You must shed your skin like a snake every day. - The time required for your long rest is extended by 2 hours.
40 - If you have a suggestion, you must whisper it conspiratorially to only one person and pretend you said nothing when anyone else asks.
41 - You believe you’re invisible. You're not.
42 - Every day you get bitten by a mosquito in a difficult-to-scratch place. - Disadvantage to charisma checks due to constant itching.
43 - All undead look like beautiful, pleading men and women to you.
44 - Random belongings from nearby people will occasionally fall out of your clothing in front of them.
45 - You think you can talk to animals. None of them seem to like you.
46 - You can only speak in lies, and you love telling lies. - You cannot cast a spell with verbal components.
47 - Whenever you score a critical hit, you must spend your bonus action and movement (if available) doing a victory dance.
48 - You are easily addicted to things. You deny that this is the case. - Automatically fail addiction checks.
49 - Your shadow mocks you.
50 - You feel the constant need to speak in a gravelly voice (like Batman). - Disadvantage on charisma checks.
51 - You cannot abide the sight of the opposite sex, and must avert your eyes in disgust. - You are blind with respect to humanoids of the opposite sex, and suffer disadvantage on attacks against them.
52 - All speech in Common sounds like terrified screaming to you.
53 - You are committed to forming a committed relationship with a troll, and must try to guide the group toward that objective.
54 - Your hair becomes a tangled mass of non-venomous, mostly-harmless snakes. They are not friendly to you.
55 - You believe yourself to be a were-halfling. You are not.
56 - You believe yourself to be an actor, and this campaign is an elaborate play. The audience is invisible and all around you.
57 - Nobody can remember your name, but that doesn't stop them from trying and getting it wrong.
58 - All beasts of CR 1/4 and lower are frightened of you, even your pets and livestock.
59 - You are immune to the effects of potions and poisons.
60 - You compulsively narrate your every action in a whisper.
61 - You compulsively sing, whistle, or hum a theme song that changes from situation to situation.
62 - You must now speak in the style of Randy "Macho Man" Savage.
63 - Every time you hear the word "magic," you react as if struck by the Vicious Mockery cantrip at lowest level.
64 - You become breathtakingly ugly (doesn't impact CHA). Every mirror you pass shatters loudly.
65 - You glow in the dark (dim light, 10 ft radius). You make up a different reason why whenever you’re asked.
66 - If viewed by someone using True Sight, you appear to be a mindflayer to them.
67 - You cannot eat food. Instead, each day, you must make someone cry in order to remain sated.
68 - Lightning is attracted to you, but it's shy.
69 - When crafting something, roll a d20. On a 10 or lower, you accidentally drop the item over and over when attempting to craft it.
70 - The slightest amount of intoxicant of any kind has its full effect on you (such as a thimble of beer causing drunkenness).
71 - You believe yourself to be visibly pregnant. Anyone that you complain about this to must say "Congratulations!"
72 - Your blood turns into coins as it leaves your body. Each hitpoint lost results in one silver coin falling from the wound.
73 - You must spend your first turn of combat in earnest attempting to have a dance-off against your enemy.
74 - You grow a set of vestigial gills. They are not functional. You believe they ARE functional.
75 - Your main weapon, whatever it is, begins to speak with you. It criticizes your form each time you miss an attack.
76 - You must speak like a black-hat cowboy. - Advantage to intimidation checks.
77 - All birdsong stops within 1 mile of you. Birds watch you constantly.
78 - Your sense of touch is extremely sensitive. - Advantage to sleight of hand, disadvantage to concentration checks when taking damage.
79 - You must attempt to make innuendos, or insinuate them where they do not exist. - Disadvantage to persuasion checks against decent people.
80 - A talkative flea lives in your nose. Only you can hear it.
81 - You become blurred, even to your own perception. You don't know which of the blurred images is you. - Enemies have disadvantage to attack you, you have disadvantage on dexterity saving throws and checks.
82 - You fart at inappropriate times. Whenever you are sneaking, you must roll an occasional d20 to hold the fart in. - The DC to hold this fart in is a CON save, and begins at 10, increasing by 1 each round until released.
83 - You are overwhelmed by kleptomania. You must attempt to steal something from your companions regularly.
84 - One of your companions slowly begins to find you irresistibly attractive.
85 - You grow a long, wizardly beard. Even if you shave it, it grows back within an hour.
86 - Your eyes and mouth change positions (mouths where your eyes were, an eye where your mouth was).
87 - You think if you just think a happy enough thought, you can fly. On a natural 20, you can (for one turn)!
88 - You have a crippling phobia of magic. This includes the Remove Curse spell that would cure you of this phobia.
89 - Male spiders everywhere begin trying to attract you as a mate. It's cute sometimes.
90 - You have to take ever-increasing risks to satisfy your escalating need for a thrill.
91 - You grow an extremely talkative mole on your nose. You should get that looked at. Hey, who you lookin' at?!
92 - You are compelled to challenge the occasional passerby to duels. This happens at random.
93 - You believe yourself to be actual royalty. Kneel, peasants!
94 - You cannot tell the difference between individual humanoids except temporarily, by taste.
95 - A tiny stormcloud floats two feet above you and drizzles on you constantly. Oddly, it's kind of soothing at night as long as you can block the rain.
96 - You have t-rex vision. You can only detect your enemies if they’ve moved that round or the round before. You also have advantage on attacks against lawyers.
97 - You believe you have the ability to see the future. It all seems so clear… (you don't, and it isn't).
98 - You develop the annoying habit of discussing a specific bit of cuisine any time there is a lull in conversation.
99 - You see your death in the future. All of your deaths. You are frightened of all enemies in combat until making a successful DC20 wisdom saving throw at the end of your turn, at which point you are immune to this effect for one hour.
100 - A contract falls into your lap. It promises one Wish in exchange for a child to be delivered to The Pale, courtesy of the Conclave of the Moon. There are numerous stipulations written in every conceivable language, but it seems pretty straightforward. You may immediately benefit from another Fey Curse and the advantage it conveys.
101 - Your nipples detach and begin to crawl all over your body like caterpillars. They can't be plucked off.
102 - You are terrified of the color blue.
103 - Your head turns into a donkey's head. You're capable of speech.
104 - A colony of gregarious spiders takes up residence on your face, imitating a beard. You can shake them loose whenever you like, but the colony always reappears on your face within half an hour, regardless of how many you kill or displace.
105 - Every time someone makes a joke, pun, or innuendo that you can hear, you suffer the effects of Tasha's Hideous Laughter. (DC15 to save afterward)
106 - Dandelions sprout wherever you walk as long as it's on dirt or grass.
107 - Your skin turns a violent shade of luminescent pink.
108 - You hear the song "Banana Phone" playing over and over in your mind.
109 - You always feel a bit too cold.
110 - Whenever you tell a lie, you fart loudly. - Automatically fail deception checks that involve a lie.
111 - You have drawn the attention of a miniature Genie who grants you whatever you wish for. While he generally means well, he plays a bit too loose with the creative license. Also, he gets angry if you try to stifle his creative freedom and make specific wishes (such as attempting to replicate a spell effect or a guaranteed standard outcome). He loves to try and grant wishes whenever you say, "I wish…" as well.
112 - Drinking alcohol makes you feel like you're invincible.
113 - You must now eat and digest food "in reverse." You know what I mean.
114 - You moan loudly whenever you make physical contact with another creature.
115 - Your eyes glow in the dark, and their color reflects your mood (red for anger, blue for calm, green for fear, pink for love, etc.).
116 - Large, onomatopoeic words appear and float in the air whenever you do something that makes a noise, and last a few seconds.
117 - You must end everything you say with, "Myah, see? Myah!"
118 - You must speak in pig latin.
119 - If you spend a turn yelling loudly and flexing without moving or taking any actions, bonus actions, or reactions, you may make an extra attack on the next turn with advantage. You glow brightly the entire time you're yelling in this situation.
120 - You become exceptionally greedy.
121 - If you take damage, you must use your item interaction to make sure your hair is okay on the following turn.
122 - You prefer the romantic company of bears instead of other humanoids.
123 - You have tinnitus.
124 - You absolutely REFUSE to step on cracks of any kind (mechanically, you must move only using the arrow keys).
125 - Whenever you look at someone for more than three seconds, their face appears to start melting (this is a hallucination).
126 - Any time you say a word without pronouncing the "silent" letters in it, you bite your tongue. It hurts a lot, and draws blood, which most people have no problem seeing.
127 - You speak in haiku.
128 - You can't see clothing or armor anymore. This includes your own. - Double the amount of time required to don armor.
129 - Whenever you accidentally harm an ally with an errant shot or area of effect ability or spell, you feel the power of Ryfe flow through you--you gain temporary HP equal to the damage you inflicted on your friends. This temporary HP stacks.
130 - Your thoughts are literally written on your face. In Dwarvish.
131 - Failing an ability check makes you pee, just a little.
132 - You can't see race (or gender) when looking at humanoids. Everyone looks like a white cismale human.
133 - You tip at least 50% whenever you spend money on something. If you can't afford to tip, you can't afford to buy!
134 - You think anyone shorter than you is a literal child.
135 - You develop male pattern baldness--full on horseshoe style.
136 - A brownie starts following you and cleaning up after you. If you fail to thank it each day by leaving it a present, it will sabotage you somehow.
137 - Any reptile or amphibian you see you think MUST be a cursed prince. One little kiss could break that curse…
138 - You develop a severe stutter. - Disadvantage on spellcasting ability checks.
139 - You must now regularly whisper, "I like you," in the ears of your companions, especially when they're sleeping and you're not.
140 - Whenever you're talking to someone, you must try to touch them at the same time, preferably their face.
141 - Whenever you see a beggar, you give them at least 5% of the money you have.
142 - Your sense of spice is reversed. Plain white bread is the spiciest thing in the world, and only exotic peppers taste bland to you. Water tastes like hot sauce.
143 - Any time you hear the word, "loot," you have an earthshaking orgasm.
144 - You are terrified of healing. Much like a child afraid of getting shots, you flee from people trying to heal you.
145 - If you swear, a silver coin falls out of your pocket (if you have any).
146 - You have a slow nosebleed. It never stops, except when you're looking straight upward or sleeping.
147 - You see dolls following you. They always seem to disappear around corners or behind objects and vanish right after you notice them.
148 - Reading gives you a vicious headache.
149 - Whenever nobody else is around to see, doors close and lock you in whatever room you're in (if it has doors that lock).
150 - Your bellybutton turns into a little mouth that screams out cheerleading slogans and hype for you at random moments.
151 - Your hands ooze delicious butter substitute. On attacks of natural 1, you fumble your weapon.
152 - Your mouth is permanently dry. Make with the lip-smacking sounds!
153 - Your character must loudly sing a "poop song" whenever you go to the bathroom in real life.
154 - Whenever someone says your name, you have a sneezing fit.
155 - You remain oblivious to clues obtained through sight or sound, and must roll investigation checks using your sense of taste instead. You don't suffer any particular disadvantage for this--enjoy synesthesia!
156 - When you're in crowds or moving through city streets or the like, random and hurtful insults are hurled at you from people you can't see.
157 - There's always a piece of broccoli stuck in your teeth. You can feel it, though you can never quite liberate it from your teeth. Everyone can see it, but you can never spot it in the mirror.
158 - Everything you put in your backpack or bag of holding gets covered in glitter. This doesn't make shopkeeps happy.
159 - If you are feminine, you grow a third breast. If you are masculine, you grow a third butt cheek.
160 - You always suggest peace as the first option to resolve any conflict. Even conflicts you start. This means if you start a fight, you must spend at least 1 action suggesting you all stop and think about just talking it out.
161 - Your finger and toenails grow at a rate of one inch per hour, and your teeth are the only thing that can cut them (or so you believe).
162 - Your feelings are delicate--you're easily offended and prone to loud bouts of crying.
163 - You are colorblind.
164 - Your clothes flutter heroically in a breeze that nobody else can feel or detect. The breeze smells strongly of hot garbage.
165 - You think about 50% of pockets are mimics.
166 - Your ears are now inside your mouth. You are deafened unless your mouth is open.
167 - Your eyebrows are always meaningfully arched.
168 - Your cheeks hang low and flap like a bloodhound's jowls.
169 - You continually emit a loud, high-pitched noise that only children under age 18 can hear.
170 - Any time you are immersed in darkness, you hear childlike laughter around you.
171 - You never wake up where you went to sleep.
172 - You think you're one of the other members of your party, selected by the GM.
173 - Every piece of food you touch turns into peppermint candy.
174 - You don't believe in the fey so hard that you literally cannot perceive them. Any effect caused by a Fey creature you rationalize to protect your disbelief.
175 - You believe you can speak with plants. They flatter you and tell you secrets (which may or may not be true).
176 - Any time you handle paper or books you get a papercut.
177 - The floor looks like molten cheese to you.
178 - You believe your imaginary friend has become real. He is not happy that you've been neglecting him all these years.
179 - You become painfully skinny.
180 - You become morbidly obese.
181 - Your nosehairs grow to be 6 inches long and constantly wiggle. Even trimmed, they regrow at the end of each long rest.
182 - Honestly, you're not sure how you're doing, but you'd love to talk about it.
183 - Whenever you critically miss an attack roll, the attack rebounds and hits you (for the lowest possible damage on the dice if applicable).
184 - A tiny purple worm dwells within your body. It harmlessly erupts from your skin to do things like eat your food, chew holes in your clothing, and scare children.
185 - You have head lice so long as you have the curse. The lice are real, and contagious.
186 - Ants begin to worship you. Each morning you see tiny cults of insects that have brought you gifts, such as crumbs of bread and bits of metal. Behold your almighty power!
187 - Every time someone says your name, you're convinced that they're propositioning you.
188 - A snail begins to chase you from somewhere in Illostere. If it ever manages to touch you, you'll die. You are fully aware of this fact.
189 - The Metacurse. If you ever make a comment that implies that you're metagaming, your gender changes. This effect is permanent. The DM makes the call on if you're metagaming or not.
190 - You are under the permanent effect of Disguise Self, appearing to look like one of your comrades, as determined by the DM.
191 - Whenever you see a rainbow, you are compelled to find the gold at the end of it. This happens every time that it rains.
192 - You believe (loudly, and to anyone who will listen) that you are the incarnation of the god that best suits your alignment and personality.
193 - You have performance anxiety.
194 - You have imposter syndrome.
195 - Every stranger you see looks like they're wearing a Nemo mask.
196 - Every stranger you see looks like Nemo wearing a stranger mask.
197 - Every time you touch a coin, it springs to life (sprouting little arms and legs, as well as eyes and a mouth) and starts singing loudly about having "Money for Nothin" while fleeing from you.
198 - Your bed--whether it be a mattress, bedroll, hammock, or otherwise--has an appetite… FOR YOU! You think your bedding is a mimic trying to eat you. (It's not, but you have trouble being convinced of that or resting).
199 - Pixies, which are normally shy creatures, suddenly find you irresistibly attractive.
200 - A dark metal coin containing one humanoid soul falls into your lap. It whispers in terror and pain at all times. Fiends cherish these coins, and may be willing to trade for them. You are able to immediately benefit from another Fey Curse and the advantage it conveys.

tl;dr: Most of my students passed their prerequisite classes without learning much. Semester is halfway done and I just realized that my students could not and cannot follow my class. Too late to cover the prerequisites at this point. I have no idea how to evaluate them. College expects me to go easy on them. Any input is appreciated.
If you don't want to read this all, you can just skip to the part that starts with "A few hour ago..." It's bolded. It's still very long though.
Warning: Very very very long post.
‌Background: I (28m) am from and living in a developing country. I got my BS from the most prestigious university of my country and my MS and PhD from an R1 university in the USA; all in engineering. I graduated last December and returned back home.
I am currently teaching two undergrad courses as an adjunct professor at two different universities in my hometown. One is public and one is private. In my country, the public universities are very competitive because you can study there with no tuition, get a free dorm and have a better quality of education, while private ones have a bad reputation.
I have TA'ed before, but this is my first semester of teaching classes by myself. I enjoy teaching and up until now, I was always under the assumption that I am a great teacher. When I was TA'ing during grad school, my end of the year evaluations were overwhelmingly positive.
Now, I am having a fantastic time at the public university that I'm teaching. Students and I get along pretty well and the classes are fun. Almost everyone engages in the class discussions and it seems like we are all happy.
But the private university? I don't know where to begin. One week before the start of my class there, the head of our department gave me a phone call and told me "keep in mind that we are a private school, and a lot of our students are lacking a strong academic background." I told myself, okay, no big deal.
The course that I'm teaching is a sophomore math class to 45 students. It's one single 2:30 hour session a week. (Which actually should be two 1:30 per week, but the college decided to combine them into one and also make it shorter.) I was told that not too many students would show up for the first week of the class. Guess what? NOT EVEN A SINGLE STUDENT showed up. Literally an empty classroom. Turns out that this is really normal at that school. No one also shows up a week before the spring break because they want to go visit home and tickets sell out so they buy tickets for an earlier date. The week right after spring break? Same thing. Funny thing is that 90% of the students are local. Again, All professors are used to this and this is the norm.
I also realized that I have to expect no one to show up on the last week of classes as well, because they need time to study for the finals. (Honestly, it appears that this is the norm all around my country regardless of the university. Every professor and staff knows that students won't show up on the first and last week of the classes, and also the weeks before and after the spring break, even though the academic calendars officially say that classes should be held on those dates. The school that I did my undergrad at was pretty strict with attendance though and I never knew that we were the outliers. I guess that's one reason why my alma mater is respected globally.)
I started the math class with the attitude of teaching the class for my students with real world examples, so that they know what the points of each of these mathematical relationships are. For any formula and function, I tried to come up with actual examples and how they can really be used. In the middle of the very first session, students told me that they are not able to follow the class and told me: "Do not teach us with an applied perspective, just write everything in terms of x, y, etc." I was teaching derivatives and wanted to show them how you can apply it to kinetic energy equation. (A high school level formula) They told me their concerns. I just changed the word "kinetic energy" into "function" and symbols "m & v" into "x & y" in the same equation and asked "better?" And suddenly they were like "Yeah, exactly. Thank you." (Retroactively, I think that my approach was stupid. In the future for any class, I will just go with x, y, z like everyone else does.)
Every week I keep realizing how bad my student's prior knowledge from the previous classes are. In the first week, they asked me if it would be possible to go over some stuff from the previous semester. I was assuming that they needed a refresher so in the next class I very briefly reviewed some of the materials. It was two weeks ago that I realized how bad things really are. I realized that they don't even know what imaginary numbers are. (In my country, imaginary numbers, derivatives and integration is taught in Calc 1; and Calc 2 covers multivariable calculus.) Turns out that no professor did manage to teach that concept in any of the previous classes. They are in their fourth semester and don't know one of the most important topics of their major that is taught in the first semester and is frequently revisited afterwards.
I just learned that these stuff are pretty common. I was talking with another professor in the same private university who teaches Calc 1 and 2 and she said that the instructor who was teaching Calc 1 last semester ran out of time and didn't teach integration at all and now she has to teach it in Calc 2. She was complaining that the students don't have any idea what some of the most important math concepts from high school are. She was frustrated and told me "I am trying to accommodate as much as I can. I start my classes an hour later. I try to tell jokes and stories to keep the students entertained. But how much can I do to engage them?"
I was talking with my cousin who has been an adjunct there as well for ten years. I told her I guess for some exam problems, I have to give my students the exact same mathematical problems which I went over in the class and just change some numbers. She replied that I should even probably keep the numbers the same or otherwise many students will not be able to pass. She told me that for her class, at the end of the semester students have to present their final projects to her one-on-one, because most of the students pay someone else to do their project for them and she can easily tell that some of these students do not have any idea what the project is about.
Most of my students do not pay any attention to the class. High school attitude. They keep talking and sometimes heckle me. I take attendance in the middle of the class, and some students leave as soon as the attendance is taken. Heck, last week I just read someone's name, he said present, I checked his name, he stood up, said "time to play video games" and left the class.
Every week, 1:30 hour into the class (class takes 2:30 hours), students keep asking me when I will finish the class. I say "I will let you guys leave 15 mins early" and every single time they all gasp in disbelief very loudly: "Only 15 minutes?". Sometimes they want a break in the middle of the class and I say they can have a 5 minute break. Again, loud gasps. I really cannot give them a 15 minutes break and also finish the class 15 minutes early. That means that I will effectively have 12 classes each taking two hours (a total of 24 hours) in the entire semester for a class that would take at least 40 hours to complete in a normal institution.
When the students want a break in the middle of the class, they tell me to "take attendance right now." Notice that there's rarely the word "please" or "is it possible" in their sentences. (I think this is a cultural thing. Even in my undergrad school, which is known for having very obedient students, a lot of them would just tell the professor things like "Move the midterm date" or "extend the homeworks". Some professors could not say no and kept extending homeworks week after week. Some would say no and after a few back and forth, the students gave up. Some would simply ignore what the students said and continued lecturing. Looking back, I find it very interesting that not even a single professor would even implicitly state that the students' requests were unreasonable and rude.)
Sometimes they BEG me to finish the class earlier (Interesting, since they never normally say please for anything). I don't want to demonize them for this though. Their classes are scheduled in a way that it would be enough for them to be on campus for only a couple of days a week. As a result, they (officially at least) have back-to-back classes from 8 AM until 5 PM without a single minute of break in between. They tell me that they are tired, cannot follow the lecture anymore and need to eat lunch. I also realized that another instructor who teaches after me decided to move their class to an hour earlier; so some of my students have to leave early because of the conflict. Sometimes near the end of the class, some students ask me: Are you going to ask us what you are talking right now in the exam? I honestly say "No, I'm not." And then they leave the class.
Out of 45 student, each week only 30 show up. Only 10 pay attention to the lecture. Only two of them answer to the questions and it appears that only one of those two people is "really" understanding what's going on. He was the only person who actually bothered to go to the bookstore and see which versions of the textbook are available to buy. He tries to connect each topic that I teach to the materials from previous courses. (Still, I can see that he sometimes mixes up some concepts, but he's still head and shoulders above other classmates.) I was assuming that he's the proof that previous professors taught the required materials for the class. Turns out he reads the course textbooks for his own pleasure and goes beyond the materials taught in the class.
I try to be a nice professor as much as I can but I just find it weird how some students are trying to push their luck. Once, a student was 15 minutes late to the class. After he sat down, he asked if I can go over the lecture once again, which I replied no. Another day, I told all the students that they can bring a cheat-sheet to the mid-term and final exams. Next week one student asked me if it's okay to open the cheat-sheet on her phone. I said no and she said what would the difference be? Another students asked if the midterm exam can be online and remotely instead of in-person.
I realized that me writing on the board and them just literally copying would be very inefficient and unnecessarily time consuming, so I decided to type my lecture notes with very very extended written explanations and upload it for them. One of the students asked "Have your indicated in the notes that which materials are for midterm and which ones are for finals?" Another one asked me how many pages the notes will be, and I said around 50. Everyone gasped in disbelief again. (They felt it's too much.)
I told students that for every error that they can find in the e-notes, I will give them an extra credit. One person (that "video game guy") asked for how many points? I said 1 percent of the total grade for each error. He looked me in the eyes with a straight face and said: "Bro, 1 percent is nothing. Make it 5 percent." (I swear this is what he said, word for word.) I didn't lose my temper, but I got frustrated and said: "You know what? There would be no extra credit."
I told the students that I will grade both mid-term and the final exam, the one that they did better would be out of 65% and the other would be out of 40%. So a total of 105%. There are no graders or TAs, so it would be impractical to give them homeworks. Even if I do so, most likely many of them would not turn them in or would just cheat. I would be surprised if I find out any professor here that would give homeworks. Having no TAs also means that there would be no discussion/problem solving classes as well.
There are also no office hours at this school. My cousin told me there is no point in office hours, since all of the students only study for the exam the night before. (It seems that office hours is also an alien concept in my country.)
I told my students that I will upload a sample midterm exam for them to get a feel of how the exams would be. At this rate, I'll be slashing about 70-80% of the course syllabus. Just teaching the bare bones.
On the first day of the class, I introduced myself and told them about my past education. I said the name of my undergrad institution, and everyone said "WHAT?". I said that I got my MS and PhD at University of XYZ (a very famous city in the US) there was a silence until someone finally said "Where's XYZ?" I told them that it's a city in the US and they jokingly asked me: "Then what are you doing here?" Later I was talking about the course policy, etc. and I heard and saw two students in the last row of the class who were saying: "This dude came from XYZ and he thinks this is a similar place."
A few hours ago the head of the department gave me a phone call again. She told me that a lot of students came to her complaining that they cannot understand anything that I teach in the class. She says that she understands that I come from a strong academic background, but I have to make sure that what I teach would be something that the students can follow, for example, I can "review" the materials from the previous classes. I told her that so far we finished week 8 out of 12 and I only taught 5 classes out of 28 classes of the same course that I took back in college. She said she understands that, but still, she wants me to "review" materials of the previous courses.
She told me that, for example, it is possible that you might be teaching the physics course and during it you would need to teach something from the prerequisite math class. Or herself teaches dynamics class and during that class she teaches materials from the prerequisite statics class as well. I told her that I was not aware of the students' previous lack of knowledge. She said it's normal since this is my first semester teaching and she had a similar experience. She told me it's better for me to give the students an easy exam this semester and from the next semester I can adjust the materials that I teach.
She suggested that, for example, I do not need to cover 2 and 3 dimensional topics. (Which I already did not cover those.) She also suggested that I don't need to derive relationships or provide proofs. (I made some derivations and proofs that, looking back, I feel like (for a lack of better word) were "a waste of time". But I feel like without those, there would be nothing else to cover in the class. I just have to write formulas and students have to plug numbers in without any idea on what even the point of this formula is. Like what are the inputs and outputs? What exactly are we calculating? What's the point?)
I told her about me giving the students typed lecture e-notes and a sample exam, and she thanked me a lot for it. I brought up that the midterm is happening soon and she said: "Oh, you're also having a midterm? That's very nice of you." She also said that I can also allocate some time of my class so that students can ask me their questions. (I really cannot do this.) I said that I made a group chat so that anyone can ask me any question any time. (Which so far no students did so.) She again appreciated this.
At this point I'm lost. The course that I teach has two halves that are not connected directly. So you can learn one half without the need for other half. If I knew about the current situation, I would have started with the second half since it's easier to understand and for someone without good prerequisite knowledge, it would flow better into the first half. (Yeah, if students know the prerequisites, it's better to teach first half and then the second. But for someone with no idea? Second and then first I guess would have been better.)
Anyway, last week I started the second half and decided to go over the prerequisite (that very same topic that should have been taught on the first semester) but it seems like the students have already lost hope and gave up on the class. They (except for those 10 students who are actually trying) didn't even try to give it a shot and listen to the class last week, even though I insisted that I will be covering the prerequisites and it's a completely unrelated and new topic. Many left halfway through the lecture anyway (They haven't even been listening in the first place).
Another problem is that I don't know what can I do with the first half. I already finished it. Too late to go through its prerequisites. Also the midterm exam is approaching soon, so there's not much that I can do about it. Assuming that I go through the prerequisites of the first half as well, I feel that the students would still have a hard time to grasp the first half since it was covered before its prerequisites. Also, if I do that, I have to slash the second half of the course which I think would be more helpful for them.
There are some students in the class that make motivated to care about the class. I really want those 10 people or so to learn well, because it seem that they want to. But I feel that the school expects me to pass most (or maybe all) of the students.
I'm not sure how I can write "easy exam problems" for the first half that is covered in the midterm. Every week I was thinking about the problems that would be on the midterm exam, and every week those problems would get easier and easier. As I mentioned, I just taught the bare bones. There's no way to make it any simpler. If I had taught them the prerequisites of the first half, I could have evaluated the students on those, but it's too late and the midterm is coming up in two weeks. The exam papers are not printed yet, but I already wrote the problems in my head. They really cannot get any easier. The only thing easier would be for me to ask them questions like: "What is the name of this formula" or "How many variables do we need to solve the following equation." Or maybe I can design an open book/open notes exam and give them problems that are exactly the same with the notes, albeit with different numbers.
I knew that private universities in my country were easier on students, But I didn't expect anything like this. And this school is one of the better private schools in my city. At this point I even suspect that the admission rate of this school is somewhere close to 100%. I feel like that I am teaching at a diploma mill. I don't know what to do about that. Not sure how ethical it would be for me to stay here.
I really need to see how the students would perform in the midterm. If most of them can pass, good. But if most of them fail, I'm not sure what should I do. Private schools have bad rep in my country, so it's not like that those who didn't deserve to get an engineering degree but get one will end up getting critical jobs. But still, intentionally passing students who otherwise would not have been able to would be unfair to their hardworking classmates.
I might be overreacting. Maybe if my students take the current midterm, many of them would get very good grades. My current exam has 4 problems: 1 identical to the notes, 1 identical to the sample exam, and two very similar to the problems that we worked in the class but with some variations. (One student on the first day told me that some professors' exams are difficult because they give problems that are actually a combination of two different familiar problems.)
If you have read so far, I really want to thank you! Any comment is very highly appreciated.
P.S. Remember that brilliant and polite student that I talked about? The only one that follows the lectures very carefully, engages in good conversations and tries his best to learn? I recently found out that he is openly neo-Nazi. Ouch.

i hate the way people treat other women who are interested in the ml in the comments. they’ll literally say the rudest stuff; for example, whenever you go to the comment section to “remarried empress”, you’ll see a bunch of horrible comments about rashta (i think that’s her name i haven’t read it in a long time) saying stuff like “trashta” and overall degrading her. she was literally a slave?? if you had the opportunity to become a rich/be a noble, i’m sure you’d take it too. it’s also funny because they don’t say anything about the emperor guy, when he’s quite literally worse? also he’s literally the emperor, i’m pretty sure she couldn’t decline. now, another thing i hate is they only treat women like this. they call women who take interest in the male lead names, a “ship sinker”, and other bad things, but when there’s a second male lead, everyone feels bad and babies him (which is also weird bc it’s usually a grown man..)
anyways ik that was a lot but im rlly tired of webtoon comments 😭

Part One
The recluse in my room won't stop talking to me. I don't even know when it started. Once it did though, it became more and more frequent. At first I thought, maybe I was going crazy. However I had always been a bit on the mentally unwell side, to put it lightly. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression in six grade. The psychiatrist said it was like I was put together wrong. The thing is he didn't just mean my internal organs, nor did he simply mean the thoughts in my head; but like something deep to the core of my very atoms was wrong. Was gross. War rotten. Was nasty. Then.. when I met Dr. Peterson is when he told me I have something against people. He told me that I seemed to have disdain for those around me. That my pain was caused by me in many ways. He wasn't wrong of course, but he could never figure out why exactly I ended up this way, and of course I could never tell him. When you tell doctors the truth, they try to hurt you. The try to send you away to that place. To the dark side of the earth. I will NOT go there again. I will not go there again. I will not go there again. I will not go there AGAIN.
So, I lied. I Said I didn't know what he meant, and that I just like to keep to myself. He wasn't wrong of course. I did have a disdain for the humanly figure. Disdain for the small minded ants that wandered the broken halls of past men many times their equal. They stand in the disrepair, and wallow in it. Not me. I could never. I am not, them. I will never be them. I will however be leaving soon. So, I needed to get this out. You might not be able to tell, but I am terrified. I am terrified of him. I am terrified of it. I am terrified of me. However, I am most terrified of the spider. No matter what it says to me. The brown recluse that follows me into my dreams, it tells me to not fear it. It tells me to not fear it while it plunges it's incisors down into my forearm, and pushes the venomous liquid out of it's body into mine. Sucking away the little life I have, while plunging in new disease on top of disease. In order to understand my fear, to understand my pain, to understand the bottomless stairs to the lair of hell which innocent souls go. Then let me go back. Let me go back. Let me go back. Let me go back.
I was thirteen when I was diagnosed with an auto immune disorder, I wasn't surprised, even back then. Sickness, disease, and torture seemed to follow members of my family wherever they went. Take my grandmother for example. She had led a very good life. A modest, God fearing life. Ya know where that got her? Laying six feet deep, after a years long struggle from oral cancer. The woman never chewed tobacco in her life, never so much as laid a finger on any drug, and never did anything bad to anyone in her entire life. Yet, she still moved onward to the dark abyss that we call death. Now I'm alone. I'm alone, and that spider knew it. It knew when I was watching it. It knew when I was thinking about it even. It knew. It always knew. It knew that the one person I had left, was gone.
My grandmother was my favorite person. She helped me when I needed it most. She came to me when I was down. She came to me when I was blue. She came to me, when the spider wouldn't leave and wanted you. Now she sits down, down down down. Down in the murky waters of soot and sand. I will go down there one day too. Honestly, I hope I go down further. I would rather burn in hell for the reset of eternity than allow my consciousness to go straight into an endless abyss of darkness and loneliness coagulating into the oozing mud that is the pitch black. It isn't my choice though now is it. See my grandmother always terrified me. This is one of the reasons that I love what scares me. I love the excitement. I love the thrill, but I also loved her. My grandmother was a child of four. She was a beautiful girl, but her mother hated her for it. As the eldest, her mother would always tell her that she had a face only a mother could love. That no man should ever want her.
When she entered high school though, that wasn't quite true. When she finally found a man that she cared for, her mother enraged with jealousy of her beauty, youth, and freedom decided to rob her of it. She decided that if she should suffer, so should her daughter. So, she went into the kitchen and grabbed a pot. She seared it on the low burning flame, and added oil until it popped. Then when my grandmother came home, she splashed a pot of boiling oil on the side of her face. It caused the skin of half of her face to melt, and droop downward like melting wax. Only for the oil to leave her face and the skin that melted downward hardened in various spots. Creating this crater effect on half of my grandmother's face. My great grandmother finally made her wish and statements come true, my grandmother had a face only a mother could love. That was until I came along. I see my grandmother for what she is. A beautiful woman, with the soul of an angel and the face of a loving goddess. As I said before, tragedy and despair follow my family like vultures. Waiting for dead corpses to pile up so that they might chew away at the last remaining fabric of their skin.
Most people think of me as an outcast. I never cared. I always thought that the best thing I could be, is alone. I was always sick everyone said. No one knew quite how sick I was, or what type of illness I bear. People told me I had my weaknesses, like my immune system. My immune system has always been somewhat confused, it seems to think that I am the foreign body. That mere consumption provide enough reason, to rid the body of itself. This caused me much pain, mentally and physically. However, no one told me I also had my strengths. I had to find that out for myself. See when no one bothered me, my brain could be set free. I could see anything I wished. Feel anything I wanted to. It all started when I was very young. I used to sit in my room for hours and talk to my friends, some of them more real than others. I had a friend named Koby. He was my most real friend.
I met Koby at elementary school, a private school where everyone except me was laced with hundred dollar bills. Koby’s family was also wealthy, but he was different from other people too. He didn’t understand when people made fun of him, why people made fun of him. He was naïve. Me on the other hand, I watched everyone. Judged everyone, just like they judged me. I got a cheaper entry in to my school due to my grandmother working at the school office. After summer ended people would come into class and the teacher would inevitably ask “What did you do this summer class?”. Everyone else either went to Greece, Italy, Rome, Japan, or some other foreign country. They were different than me, and they made sure I knew it. Not Koby though. Koby never asked me about my money, and we liked some of the same things. People would tease us and call us gay, because we liked “girly shows on the Disney channel”. We both came from a perspective of liking what we like unapologetically, at first.
We did indeed have a close and personal friendship, the kind young boys who care not about societal boundaries have. We would throw each other over one another’s heads in his pool mimicking wrestling moves. Imitating Randy Orten, and Brock Lesnar as if we were lumbering monsters of flesh and bones. Sometimes we would get hurt, bang our head in to the wrong object, or hit something too hard; only to console each other as to not cry and get in trouble. We also would make short films that ranged from comedy to action, and we replicated the bad language we saw online. We loved choreographing fake sword fights, and I always loved living as a swordsman in my head. Imagining chopping apart opponents, limb by limb as I dismantle their world and build my own. I also always wanted to act. I thought I was quite good at keeping on masks. Never relenting on an unending character, the likes of which only I know are fake. Koby and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot though. He was a huge fan of childish games, while I liked things to be a bit more advanced and difficult. He thought random curse words were funny, while I felt my taste a little more sophisticated. Did I feel superior to him? In some ways yes. It didn’t matter though, what mattered is they didn’t like him almost as much as they hated me. That helped us bond.
Then one day something changed. Koby changed, he became one of them. Koby began to play into their jokes. Tried to be what they wanted him to be, a clown. The bullying got worse, and worse. It started with calling us gay, use the f slur towards us, and other homophobic slurs. It then turned in to physical violence. People slapping us, using us as punching bags. I was a big kid. I think they enjoyed the idea of having power over someone larger than them.
One day during basketball, we were playing knock out. During Koby’s turn, one of the kids James went up to him and punched him directly in the eye. He did this due to being “knocked out” moments prior in the game by Koby. Having had enough, I immediately threw my basketball at the kids head, and moved to begin smashing his skull with my bare knuckles. Gnarling, and utilizing years of frustration I lunged at James. Rather than joining me in fighting him, Koby stopped me. He stood between me and James. He apologized to James profusely begging for his forgiveness, and scolded me. Told me how evil I was for simply fighting back. I had never felt more embarassed. More betrayed. The person I called a friend, would stop me from protecting him, and make me look like a weak fool in front of everyone. He cared more about his image to them, the people who didn’t like him to begin with than the will and anger his own “friend”. I would never stoop so low as to let the people who berated me, who hurt me choose who I become or what actions I take. That’s when I realized my “real” friend, wasn’t so real at all. I gladly accepted that I would never protect another being again.
After he stopped me, he became close with the people we once loathed. He would go on to spend time with them, join their clubs, go to their birthday’s. He was no longer the Koby I was once tolerated, and was now something very different. I hated him, at first. That was until he became comfortable enough with them, so comfortable he told them my deepest darkest secrets. The boys that had been scolding us, making us feel like nothing for years, he told them of my abuse. He told them of my desires, and of my fears. He told them who I enjoyed spending time with, what kinds of media I enjoyed, and what goals I had. He told them. That is what matters, and that is unforgivable. When I told him that what I thought about him, when I let him know how small of an ant he truly was to me, that’s when the voices around me became more than real. In a way they were the truth. They never lied to me. They always told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear. They never judged me when I was wrong. So, when I was by myself… I was never truly alone. Some of them have names, others are a faint whisper. An echo of the wills of the past. A presence, that is not quite understood.
See I grew up in a trailer park. That is why the rich kids would never like me. I wore the same tattered uniform to school every day. Never having enough change to purchase a hot lunch, always begging the school for free food just to eat for that day. I never really thought much of my family’s money, or lack thereof. I somewhat liked living at the trailer park. I had acquaintances of all backgrounds, ethnicities, nationalities, languages you name it. However, people knew of me, but no one knew me. I would put on a front, and call myself by different names just to toy with people. Sometimes I would do different accents, to see how long it would take for someone to realize how fake it was. I always liked playing tricks on people, it’s one thing that often alienated me more than anything else. I didn’t care. I saw it as more of an art than anything. Plus never letting anyone in on the joke, made it all the more special. Only I could control what others knew of me. I was the bottle neck for that pipeline of information.
One trick I used to play on my neighbor Darren was exceedingly hilarious, but he didn’t like it much at all. He had a cat, it was a black and white cat named Moo that loved all the kids in the neighborhood. Except me. It would always scratch at me when it saw me, hiss like I was some monster. One thing that no one liked however, is that this cat meowed as loud as a Bostonian woman in the middle of an orgasm. Every single night, throughout the neighborhood it would whale on. It kept me up at night as a child, and made my dog anxious too. I always prayed that cat would get hit by a car, or smashed by a falling anvil. One day my wish must have come true. One day, the cat stopped meowing. Some say the cat got skittish, ran off, and got lost. I think differently. I think someone killed that cat. Someone took matters into their own hands, and good for them. When there is an annoyance, I say end it. People always get so sentimental over things like death. I find death to be peaceful, inviting. Warm.
However, even with Moo gone Darren and I still didn’t get along. He hated my dog, and blamed me for his cat going missing. So, one night I found an old recording on my phone. It was the cat meowing in the backyard. So I took my speaker over to Darren’s house, and played it at just the right volume to make it sound like the cat was at his gate. He got up moments later, and ran downstairs, searching for his cat. The way his face shimmered with mere glimpses of hope, and happiness only to give way to utter defeat and despair really put a smile on my face. The deep smile he had, turning in to a frightful scowl made my night perfect. His misery for some reason provided me with a level of comfort, knowing I could control someone’s emotions with such ease. It felt right. It felt like a power, that I deserved. Darren later that week would tell all the neighbors, and the neighbors started keeping an eye out too. The cat was never found, so they say. I think differently.
These days I don’t play many tricks on people at all. These days I’ve lost my power. I stay inside, away from those who can harm me. Free from everything of the societal world. Free to roam the mind that I so desperately aimed to understand in it’s entirety. Voices, that need to be satiated with conversations only I can have with myself. This is the only way to truly escape. The only way to be truly, and utterly free.
Day 3
I sit here on my couch. Staring at a blank screen ahead of me. Thinking not of the future, but of the past. I look fondly on my childhood memories. Moments with my parents where we would go on glorious adventures, filled with frights and delights all the same. One I recall is going to Bodega Bay with my father. We were roaming through beach caves, as the tide began to rise. I was with another child I met on the playground, and at a moments notice we were nearly trapped in the cave unable to get out. Luckily the other child’s father was able to get in the cave, and get us out. I hate to think what might have happened, had that man not been there on that day.
I think fondly of my school memories. While I had some friends, I mostly stuck to my studies. I was able to move forward, and at least pass my classes with relative ease. I always procrastinated, which gave me a lot of anxiety. I continued to do so anyway. By the time I reached high school I was able to graduate at 16. This made me ecstatic, because I no longer had to attend the high school that bored me so deeply. I was then able to take online classes for school, limiting my contact with others. Most see this as negative, I loved it dearly. I always felt I excelled when I worked on my own, rather than in teams. They always slowed me down anyway.
Today I sit quietly, in silence. Except for the sound of a child. The neighbor downstairs keeps a little brat that begs for attention all day long. Sometimes that baby reminds me of my neighbors cat when I was a child. It’s a long story, maybe we’ll get to it some other time.

• Nicholas Anderson

When I moved out of the trailer park, and started going to high school is when everything really changed. We went from living in a place with a community, to living in an apartment where no one knew their neighbors. Not that I cared for the people in my community much anyway, but having something to interact with seemed helpful. That was now gone. My father traveled for work, and my mother was usually getting high somewhere. So I would often stay by myself, in my home, alone. Listening to nothing but music, and the voices I had come to love so much. The voices that I began to see as more real, than reality itself. Even when one of my parents were around, I still just wanted to be left to my own devices. I’ve never liked interacting with anyone much. I don’t think I ever will.
Considering this to be the case, I was also still what you might consider to be anti-social. I did not like people, and most people did not like me. Once I learned how much I loved spending time with myself, this seemingly just got worse. Once I entered high school I realized how different I still was. No one here was significantly richer than anyone else, but I still felt a barrier separating me from them. I did find a small group of misfits however, to waste my time with at lunch. Even then I often still sat silently, while everyone else clambered on.
Even in this group, I still felt utterly alone. What I did enjoy however, was that my mere presence to them was somewhat of a trick. I did not care for these people. Yet they seemed to believe that simply because I was there, that I somehow cared about them. They also seemed to enjoy the embodiment of mystery I took on. I would rarely provide any information about myself, and when I did I would still commonly lie. Lie about who I had been with, what I had done, what I accomplished, what I had faith in. They believed it, for a time.
It all started to come apart, when Jada came around. Jada always seemed to take an interest in me. I didn’t really understand why. I never paid her any attention, and when I did it was always quick, simple, and to the point. Maybe my lack of interest in her, is what caused her interest in me. Either way, it wasn’t a good decision for her. I never have cared much for how my actions effected others. Nor have I ever really considered what would happen, if my lies were to be discovered. It just doesn’t matter to me, and typically I don’t stay around others long enough to be figured out anyway. Jada however, stuck to me like glue.
Anywhere I would go she would follow, with sad puppy dog eyes. Begging for attention. To be honest on some level I thought it was quite adorable, but also relished in the idea that I might be able to exert some sort of romantic power over someone. She was going to provide that to me. So, I fed in to her ways. I told her what she wanted to hear. I told her that she made me feel ways no one else ever had, which was completely fabricated. Pulled from thin air. I did not love this girl. I loved what she could do for me. I loved how I could make myself feel with her, and now that I had a taste of it I loved that power. That was, until she started to push back.
For a while I thought I was untouchable, I thought no one could break the spell I had on Jada. Any time I would ask her to be somewhere, she would be in an instant. It did not matter the time or the place. I could tell her any lie, ask her to complete any task and she would believe it or complete it. I had her fully in the palm of my hand with a firm grasp, until others in our little group started to get in to her head. They started to realize that some of my stories, didn’t quite add up. They saw how Jada spent her time with me. How she was at my every beck and call. That she would give up anything for me, yet I would give up nothing for her. They were jealous. They wanted to have that control over somebody, but they never could. They were never smart enough, never talented enough to do so. They told her that I was no good for her, that I was using her.
Make no mistake, I was using her. Isn’t that what love is? One using another person, to find some bliss. Some happiness which they can’t find elsewhere? Why am I wrong for doing the same. She provided me pleasure, I provided her with some in return. Sounds like a fair transaction to me. Besides, who are they however to interfere with my life. With my people. With my toys. When she finally told me she never wanted to see me again, I knew she was lying. She wanted me more than ever. Wanted to fix me. Wanted to make me hers, but she would only ever be mine to toy with. I was unfixable, because I wasn’t broken. It was everyone else that needed fixing, I was simply playing the game. Not long after Jada said that to me, I was excised from our group.
They thought of me as a dirty liar, who they couldn’t trust. It’s not my fault I played with those who are easily fooled, preyed on what made them weak. I was simply showing them what they were doing wrong. What they could do better. I knew from then on that the only person who understood me was the people I spoke to when I as alone. They knew me better than I knew myself. They knew what I wanted, what I could do. They had faith in me. That’s when I knew I needed to keep myself low. Put away. Kept neatly in a box, so that way I could ascertain my full potential. Once again I realized, only then could I be free. People, even as my toys were more detrimental to me than anything else. I loved being alone, but more importantly I thrived in it.
Once I started staying away, keeping to myself. I realized love was not what I had been told. Love was not for others, but for the feeling one can attain from the power it provides. With other humans that power is fleeting, but with one’s self it remains until your eminent death. With only myself in my home is when I found my first true love aside from loneliness. Cutting. Utilizing a blade to make the marks on my skin which I now define as art. A knife’s place is meant to be against the skin of a being. It fits so fluidly down the fold of one’s figure, like a figure skater dancing around an icy path with the blades on their feet. Leaving behind trails of love, despair, pain, and joy.
I swear it was an accident at first. I was in the kitchen one day, angry that I couldn’t understand myself. Why I felt the way I felt about life. Angry that I felt abandoned, without a mentor to assist me in both my strengths and my weaknesses. That’s when I instinctively took a knife angled it directly downward with both hands grasping it, and I slammed it straight down in to a cutting board. Little did I know that my hand would slide on to the knife as the impact was made with the board. My white tendons on the left side of my inner right palm, sliced open. Bleeding profusely.
My anger swelled in that moment, and manifested in immense pain that synergized and gave me something I had never quite felt like that before. Euphoria. Pure, and utter bliss. In that moment I felt aroused, excited, ready for something to happen. Nothing did. As my feelings of euphoria began to fade away, I was left with the slide in my hand from the blade. Blood dripping all over the cutting board, and the counter beside it. Crimson red splattered behind the board, leaving a bloody mess to clean up. I quickly applied pressure, and got a bandaid from the bathroom sink. Applied it, and sopped up the red stained tile with paper towels. As I did so it occurred to me, that feeling can be replicated again. All I needed was a knife, and a will to achieve nirvana. With blood spilt, it would be far easier the next time.
Day 5
Today I find myself on the floor of the kitchen. Staring at the ceiling, thinking of past relationships. The wrongs, the rights. What I did, what I didn’t do. What could have been, and what never will be. These things I find fascinating as a self-exploration exercise. What could I have done wrong to the woman that I once said I loved, so much so that she deems it necessary not to speak to me again. Did I do anything wrong to begin with? Is it true that she will never speak to me again? I find it doubtful, although I do not put myself in high regard on this situation either. I called her my baby doll, because that is what she is for me. I just want her back. Sometimes. However, I want her back for me. She wants me back for her. Maybe we can meet in the middle.
I think of my parents and what they didn’t do for me as a child. They weren’t model citizens, but they also weren’t terrible parents. They just didn’t know how to raise a child, and honestly who the hell does? I fault them not for what they did, but for allowing themselves to have a child in the first place when they were not ready. Bringing a child in to a world you are not prepared for let alone them, is downright despicable. A selfish and vile act of pure arrogance of nature. The arrogance of two to think love is enough to fill the stomach of their child.
Children deserve to be nourished and cared for. They deserve to prosper and have what is needed at their fingertips to grow. Anything below what you are most capable of is a disappointment, however being short of the basic necessities is abuse. This is why I would never have a child, I am not ready nor am I sure that I could truly care. If I could not care, but fake it would that be equally meaningful as a father who truly loves their child? Is it a father a child needs? Or does a child just need a figure. Someone, anyone to emulate. For finding your own way, and your own emulation in the world is the scariest task one might undergo.
Take the child downstairs for example. It cries non-stop, yet the parents do nothing to satiate the child. Whaling on and on. I could never understand bearing your carbon copy, only to neglect them. Why copy yourself to begin with. Let the branch of life come to an end. Let it fizzle out of the universe alongside that great big ball of fire we call a sun. Let us fizzle out like the final firework in the night sky during a Fourth Of July display. Burning ever so slightly less until the stars of the galaxy swallow the light whole, leaving nothing left to be devoured.

• Nicholas Anderson

Some people might say I am deeply arachnophobic, I am not. I say I am not, because it’s not the spiders I fear,. I fear what I don’t know. I don’t know where they are, I don’t know where to expect them, I don’t know what they want. I don’t know. I don’t know… Except this time. This time it seems… different. The spider in my room, it seems to understand me, somehow. Somehow, I understand… it. I’ve never liked spiders, their creepy multiple eyes, their sharp toothed grin ready to snatch away your life at any moment. Sure most spiders aren’t poisonous, but some of them are. That’s all that matters. Some spiders are small, some are massive. I hate the big ones. Ya see, I got bit by a black widow as a child. I was foolishly playing in the garage with my toys, oblivious to the world around me.
At 3 years old, I had my first encounter with this terrestrial alien. The spider that bit me injected me with enough poison to kill a small horse, so the doctor laid me down; She looked over, and with a big smile she said those famous words. “This won’t hurt a bit”. She put no numbing injections, she simply wiped the site clean, and began cutting. Sawing away at my tiny toddler stomach, slowly making their way through layers of fresh, soft, smooth skin. I remember nothing but warm tears streaming down my face as I screamed at the top of my lungs. Screaming at a rate I as a child had not even yet known. The screams of pain, they are unique. People can attempt to mimic them, but the true scream of torture and death is one so blood curddling that it makes your skin crawl. As a child you know only playful screams, this was my first introduction to what pain in the real world looked like. I just so happened to be it’s next patient.
I remember the pain, the cold feeling of blood pouring down my side, and screaming for my father. Yet, my father was the one to hold me down when I started kicking at the doctor from the pain. Rather than force them to stop cutting into a child without some type of anesthetic, he continued to hold my arms and legs as the doctor cut away. My greatest support system, to betray me in such a way. To take the trust of a child and crush it. After that session, I never trusted doctor’s again. I surely, never trusted a spider. That was until now.
That’s because even if the spider in my room were poisonous… It meant me no harm. Even if it did need to nest, and lay eggs it would not do so in my body. Even if it needed sustenance, it would not come in my direction. At least, that’s what it told me. That's what it told me as it's incisors pinched it's way into my arm once again, numbing the area unlike the doctor that went to work on me as a child. As I stare into it's eyes, I realized... I was scared. I was more than scared, for once... I was terrified. For my entire life, I was the one to induce fear in others. Now, that fear was being induced in me. So I am here. I am here to tell you. Until I am not. Let these words keep you from the spiders. Do not talk to them. Do not listen to them.
Do not be afraid. Even though deep down... fear consumes me.

Hey guys, I am posting here because I have gotten removed for "not being a personal scary experience". The only thing I could think is that the character does not always seem fearful, but there's a back and forth on it, and the fear is explained. Further, I can see that maybe the sections that are in diary format might be an issue. However, they are overall still in first person and add to the story as well as are important for a turn that occurs at the end of the story. Any help would be great!
" The Recluse In My Room Won't Stop Talking To Me"
Part One
The recluse in my room won't stop talking to me. I don't even know when it started. Once it did though, it became more and more frequent. At first I thought, maybe I was going crazy. However I had always been a bit on the mentally unwell side, to put it lightly. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression in six grade. The psychiatrist said it was like I was put together wrong. The thing is he didn't just mean my internal organs, nor did he simply mean the thoughts in my head; but like something deep to the core of my very atoms was wrong. Was gross. War rotten. Was nasty. Then.. when I met Dr. Peterson is when he told me I have something against people. He told me that I seemed to have disdain for those around me. That my pain was caused by me in many ways. He wasn't wrong of course, but he could never figure out why exactly I ended up this way, and of course I could never tell him. When you tell doctors the truth, they try to hurt you. The try to send you away to that place. To the dark side of the earth. I will NOT go there again. I will not go there again. I will not go there again. I will not go there AGAIN.
So, I lied. I Said I didn't know what he meant, and that I just like to keep to myself. He wasn't wrong of course. I did have a disdain for the humanly figure. Disdain for the small minded ants that wandered the broken halls of past men many times their equal. They stand in the disrepair, and wallow in it. Not me. I could never. I am not, them. I will never be them. I will however be leaving soon. So, I needed to get this out. You might not be able to tell, but I am terrified. I am terrified of him. I am terrified of it. I am terrified of me. However, I am most terrified of the spider. No matter what it says to me. The brown recluse that follows me into my dreams, it tells me to not fear it. It tells me to not fear it while it plunges it's incisors down into my forearm, and pushes the venomous liquid out of it's body into mine. Sucking away the little life I have, while plunging in new disease on top of disease. In order to understand my fear, to understand my pain, to understand the bottomless stairs to the lair of hell which innocent souls go. Then let me go back. Let me go back. Let me go back. Let me go back.
I was thirteen when I was diagnosed with an auto immune disorder, I wasn't surprised, even back then. Sickness, disease, and torture seemed to follow members of my family wherever they went. Take my grandmother for example. She had led a very good life. A modest, God fearing life. Ya know where that got her? Laying six feet deep, after a years long struggle from oral cancer. The woman never chewed tobacco in her life, never so much as laid a finger on any drug, and never did anything bad to anyone in her entire life. Yet, she still moved onward to the dark abyss that we call death. Now I'm alone. I'm alone, and that spider knew it. It knew when I was watching it. It knew when I was thinking about it even. It knew. It always knew. It knew that the one person I had left, was gone.
My grandmother was my favorite person. She helped me when I needed it most. She came to me when I was down. She came to me when I was blue. She came to me, when the spider wouldn't leave and wanted you. Now she sits down, down down down. Down in the murky waters of soot and sand. I will go down there one day too. Honestly, I hope I go down further. I would rather burn in hell for the reset of eternity than allow my consciousness to go straight into an endless abyss of darkness and loneliness coagulating into the oozing mud that is the pitch black. It isn't my choice though now is it. See my grandmother always terrified me. This is one of the reasons that I love what scares me. I love the excitement. I love the thrill, but I also loved her. My grandmother was a child of four. She was a beautiful girl, but her mother hated her for it. As the eldest, her mother would always tell her that she had a face only a mother could love. That no man should ever want her.
When she entered high school though, that wasn't quite true. When she finally found a man that she cared for, her mother enraged with jealousy of her beauty, youth, and freedom decided to rob her of it. She decided that if she should suffer, so should her daughter. So, she went into the kitchen and grabbed a pot. She seared it on the low burning flame, and added oil until it popped. Then when my grandmother came home, she splashed a pot of boiling oil on the side of her face. It caused the skin of half of her face to melt, and droop downward like melting wax. Only for the oil to leave her face and the skin that melted downward hardened in various spots. Creating this crater effect on half of my grandmother's face. My great grandmother finally made her wish and statements come true, my grandmother had a face only a mother could love. That was until I came along. I see my grandmother for what she is. A beautiful woman, with the soul of an angel and the face of a loving goddess. As I said before, tragedy and despair follow my family like vultures. Waiting for dead corpses to pile up so that they might chew away at the last remaining fabric of their skin.
Most people think of me as an outcast. I never cared. I always thought that the best thing I could be, is alone. I was always sick everyone said. No one knew quite how sick I was, or what type of illness I bear. People told me I had my weaknesses, like my immune system. My immune system has always been somewhat confused, it seems to think that I am the foreign body. That mere consumption provide enough reason, to rid the body of itself. This caused me much pain, mentally and physically. However, no one told me I also had my strengths. I had to find that out for myself. See when no one bothered me, my brain could be set free. I could see anything I wished. Feel anything I wanted to. It all started when I was very young. I used to sit in my room for hours and talk to my friends, some of them more real than others. I had a friend named Koby. He was my most real friend.
I met Koby at elementary school, a private school where everyone except me was laced with hundred dollar bills. Koby’s family was also wealthy, but he was different from other people too. He didn’t understand when people made fun of him, why people made fun of him. He was naïve. Me on the other hand, I watched everyone. Judged everyone, just like they judged me. I got a cheaper entry in to my school due to my grandmother working at the school office. After summer ended people would come into class and the teacher would inevitably ask “What did you do this summer class?”. Everyone else either went to Greece, Italy, Rome, Japan, or some other foreign country. They were different than me, and they made sure I knew it. Not Koby though. Koby never asked me about my money, and we liked some of the same things. People would tease us and call us gay, because we liked “girly shows on the Disney channel”. We both came from a perspective of liking what we like unapologetically, at first.
We did indeed have a close and personal friendship, the kind young boys who care not about societal boundaries have. We would throw each other over one another’s heads in his pool mimicking wrestling moves. Imitating Randy Orten, and Brock Lesnar as if we were lumbering monsters of flesh and bones. Sometimes we would get hurt, bang our head in to the wrong object, or hit something too hard; only to console each other as to not cry and get in trouble. We also would make short films that ranged from comedy to action, and we replicated the bad language we saw online. We loved choreographing fake sword fights, and I always loved living as a swordsman in my head. Imagining chopping apart opponents, limb by limb as I dismantle their world and build my own. I also always wanted to act. I thought I was quite good at keeping on masks. Never relenting on an unending character, the likes of which only I know are fake. Koby and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot though. He was a huge fan of childish games, while I liked things to be a bit more advanced and difficult. He thought random curse words were funny, while I felt my taste a little more sophisticated. Did I feel superior to him? In some ways yes. It didn’t matter though, what mattered is they didn’t like him almost as much as they hated me. That helped us bond.
Then one day something changed. Koby changed, he became one of them. Koby began to play into their jokes. Tried to be what they wanted him to be, a clown. The bullying got worse, and worse. It started with calling us gay, use the f slur towards us, and other homophobic slurs. It then turned in to physical violence. People slapping us, using us as punching bags. I was a big kid. I think they enjoyed the idea of having power over someone larger than them.
One day during basketball, we were playing knock out. During Koby’s turn, one of the kids James went up to him and punched him directly in the eye. He did this due to being “knocked out” moments prior in the game by Koby. Having had enough, I immediately threw my basketball at the kids head, and moved to begin smashing his skull with my bare knuckles. Gnarling, and utilizing years of frustration I lunged at James. Rather than joining me in fighting him, Koby stopped me. He stood between me and James. He apologized to James profusely begging for his forgiveness, and scolded me. Told me how evil I was for simply fighting back. I had never felt more embarassed. More betrayed. The person I called a friend, would stop me from protecting him, and make me look like a weak fool in front of everyone. He cared more about his image to them, the people who didn’t like him to begin with than the will and anger his own “friend”. I would never stoop so low as to let the people who berated me, who hurt me choose who I become or what actions I take. That’s when I realized my “real” friend, wasn’t so real at all. I gladly accepted that I would never protect another being again.
After he stopped me, he became close with the people we once loathed. He would go on to spend time with them, join their clubs, go to their birthday’s. He was no longer the Koby I was once tolerated, and was now something very different. I hated him, at first. That was until he became comfortable enough with them, so comfortable he told them my deepest darkest secrets. The boys that had been scolding us, making us feel like nothing for years, he told them of my abuse. He told them of my desires, and of my fears. He told them who I enjoyed spending time with, what kinds of media I enjoyed, and what goals I had. He told them. That is what matters, and that is unforgivable. When I told him that what I thought about him, when I let him know how small of an ant he truly was to me, that’s when the voices around me became more than real. In a way they were the truth. They never lied to me. They always told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear. They never judged me when I was wrong. So, when I was by myself… I was never truly alone. Some of them have names, others are a faint whisper. An echo of the wills of the past. A presence, that is not quite understood.
See I grew up in a trailer park. That is why the rich kids would never like me. I wore the same tattered uniform to school every day. Never having enough change to purchase a hot lunch, always begging the school for free food just to eat for that day. I never really thought much of my family’s money, or lack thereof. I somewhat liked living at the trailer park. I had acquaintances of all backgrounds, ethnicities, nationalities, languages you name it. However, people knew of me, but no one knew me. I would put on a front, and call myself by different names just to toy with people. Sometimes I would do different accents, to see how long it would take for someone to realize how fake it was. I always liked playing tricks on people, it’s one thing that often alienated me more than anything else. I didn’t care. I saw it as more of an art than anything. Plus never letting anyone in on the joke, made it all the more special. Only I could control what others knew of me. I was the bottle neck for that pipeline of information.
One trick I used to play on my neighbor Darren was exceedingly hilarious, but he didn’t like it much at all. He had a cat, it was a black and white cat named Moo that loved all the kids in the neighborhood. Except me. It would always scratch at me when it saw me, hiss like I was some monster. One thing that no one liked however, is that this cat meowed as loud as a Bostonian woman in the middle of an orgasm. Every single night, throughout the neighborhood it would whale on. It kept me up at night as a child, and made my dog anxious too. I always prayed that cat would get hit by a car, or smashed by a falling anvil. One day my wish must have come true. One day, the cat stopped meowing. Some say the cat got skittish, ran off, and got lost. I think differently. I think someone killed that cat. Someone took matters into their own hands, and good for them. When there is an annoyance, I say end it. People always get so sentimental over things like death. I find death to be peaceful, inviting. Warm.
However, even with Moo gone Darren and I still didn’t get along. He hated my dog, and blamed me for his cat going missing. So, one night I found an old recording on my phone. It was the cat meowing in the backyard. So I took my speaker over to Darren’s house, and played it at just the right volume to make it sound like the cat was at his gate. He got up moments later, and ran downstairs, searching for his cat. The way his face shimmered with mere glimpses of hope, and happiness only to give way to utter defeat and despair really put a smile on my face. The deep smile he had, turning in to a frightful scowl made my night perfect. His misery for some reason provided me with a level of comfort, knowing I could control someone’s emotions with such ease. It felt right. It felt like a power, that I deserved. Darren later that week would tell all the neighbors, and the neighbors started keeping an eye out too. The cat was never found, so they say. I think differently.
These days I don’t play many tricks on people at all. These days I’ve lost my power. I stay inside, away from those who can harm me. Free from everything of the societal world. Free to roam the mind that I so desperately aimed to understand in it’s entirety. Voices, that need to be satiated with conversations only I can have with myself. This is the only way to truly escape. The only way to be truly, and utterly free.
Day 3
I sit here on my couch. Staring at a blank screen ahead of me. Thinking not of the future, but of the past. I look fondly on my childhood memories. Moments with my parents where we would go on glorious adventures, filled with frights and delights all the same. One I recall is going to Bodega Bay with my father. We were roaming through beach caves, as the tide began to rise. I was with another child I met on the playground, and at a moments notice we were nearly trapped in the cave unable to get out. Luckily the other child’s father was able to get in the cave, and get us out. I hate to think what might have happened, had that man not been there on that day.
I think fondly of my school memories. While I had some friends, I mostly stuck to my studies. I was able to move forward, and at least pass my classes with relative ease. I always procrastinated, which gave me a lot of anxiety. I continued to do so anyway. By the time I reached high school I was able to graduate at 16. This made me ecstatic, because I no longer had to attend the high school that bored me so deeply. I was then able to take online classes for school, limiting my contact with others. Most see this as negative, I loved it dearly. I always felt I excelled when I worked on my own, rather than in teams. They always slowed me down anyway.
Today I sit quietly, in silence. Except for the sound of a child. The neighbor downstairs keeps a little brat that begs for attention all day long. Sometimes that baby reminds me of my neighbors cat when I was a child. It’s a long story, maybe we’ll get to it some other time.

• Nicholas Anderson

When I moved out of the trailer park, and started going to high school is when everything really changed. We went from living in a place with a community, to living in an apartment where no one knew their neighbors. Not that I cared for the people in my community much anyway, but having something to interact with seemed helpful. That was now gone. My father traveled for work, and my mother was usually getting high somewhere. So I would often stay by myself, in my home, alone. Listening to nothing but music, and the voices I had come to love so much. The voices that I began to see as more real, than reality itself. Even when one of my parents were around, I still just wanted to be left to my own devices. I’ve never liked interacting with anyone much. I don’t think I ever will.
Considering this to be the case, I was also still what you might consider to be anti-social. I did not like people, and most people did not like me. Once I learned how much I loved spending time with myself, this seemingly just got worse. Once I entered high school I realized how different I still was. No one here was significantly richer than anyone else, but I still felt a barrier separating me from them. I did find a small group of misfits however, to waste my time with at lunch. Even then I often still sat silently, while everyone else clambered on.
Even in this group, I still felt utterly alone. What I did enjoy however, was that my mere presence to them was somewhat of a trick. I did not care for these people. Yet they seemed to believe that simply because I was there, that I somehow cared about them. They also seemed to enjoy the embodiment of mystery I took on. I would rarely provide any information about myself, and when I did I would still commonly lie. Lie about who I had been with, what I had done, what I accomplished, what I had faith in. They believed it, for a time.
It all started to come apart, when Jada came around. Jada always seemed to take an interest in me. I didn’t really understand why. I never paid her any attention, and when I did it was always quick, simple, and to the point. Maybe my lack of interest in her, is what caused her interest in me. Either way, it wasn’t a good decision for her. I never have cared much for how my actions effected others. Nor have I ever really considered what would happen, if my lies were to be discovered. It just doesn’t matter to me, and typically I don’t stay around others long enough to be figured out anyway. Jada however, stuck to me like glue.
Anywhere I would go she would follow, with sad puppy dog eyes. Begging for attention. To be honest on some level I thought it was quite adorable, but also relished in the idea that I might be able to exert some sort of romantic power over someone. She was going to provide that to me. So, I fed in to her ways. I told her what she wanted to hear. I told her that she made me feel ways no one else ever had, which was completely fabricated. Pulled from thin air. I did not love this girl. I loved what she could do for me. I loved how I could make myself feel with her, and now that I had a taste of it I loved that power. That was, until she started to push back.
For a while I thought I was untouchable, I thought no one could break the spell I had on Jada. Any time I would ask her to be somewhere, she would be in an instant. It did not matter the time or the place. I could tell her any lie, ask her to complete any task and she would believe it or complete it. I had her fully in the palm of my hand with a firm grasp, until others in our little group started to get in to her head. They started to realize that some of my stories, didn’t quite add up. They saw how Jada spent her time with me. How she was at my every beck and call. That she would give up anything for me, yet I would give up nothing for her. They were jealous. They wanted to have that control over somebody, but they never could. They were never smart enough, never talented enough to do so. They told her that I was no good for her, that I was using her.
Make no mistake, I was using her. Isn’t that what love is? One using another person, to find some bliss. Some happiness which they can’t find elsewhere? Why am I wrong for doing the same. She provided me pleasure, I provided her with some in return. Sounds like a fair transaction to me. Besides, who are they however to interfere with my life. With my people. With my toys. When she finally told me she never wanted to see me again, I knew she was lying. She wanted me more than ever. Wanted to fix me. Wanted to make me hers, but she would only ever be mine to toy with. I was unfixable, because I wasn’t broken. It was everyone else that needed fixing, I was simply playing the game. Not long after Jada said that to me, I was excised from our group.
They thought of me as a dirty liar, who they couldn’t trust. It’s not my fault I played with those who are easily fooled, preyed on what made them weak. I was simply showing them what they were doing wrong. What they could do better. I knew from then on that the only person who understood me was the people I spoke to when I as alone. They knew me better than I knew myself. They knew what I wanted, what I could do. They had faith in me. That’s when I knew I needed to keep myself low. Put away. Kept neatly in a box, so that way I could ascertain my full potential. Once again I realized, only then could I be free. People, even as my toys were more detrimental to me than anything else. I loved being alone, but more importantly I thrived in it.
Once I started staying away, keeping to myself. I realized love was not what I had been told. Love was not for others, but for the feeling one can attain from the power it provides. With other humans that power is fleeting, but with one’s self it remains until your eminent death. With only myself in my home is when I found my first true love aside from loneliness. Cutting. Utilizing a blade to make the marks on my skin which I now define as art. A knife’s place is meant to be against the skin of a being. It fits so fluidly down the fold of one’s figure, like a figure skater dancing around an icy path with the blades on their feet. Leaving behind trails of love, despair, pain, and joy.
I swear it was an accident at first. I was in the kitchen one day, angry that I couldn’t understand myself. Why I felt the way I felt about life. Angry that I felt abandoned, without a mentor to assist me in both my strengths and my weaknesses. That’s when I instinctively took a knife angled it directly downward with both hands grasping it, and I slammed it straight down in to a cutting board. Little did I know that my hand would slide on to the knife as the impact was made with the board. My white tendons on the left side of my inner right palm, sliced open. Bleeding profusely.
My anger swelled in that moment, and manifested in immense pain that synergized and gave me something I had never quite felt like that before. Euphoria. Pure, and utter bliss. In that moment I felt aroused, excited, ready for something to happen. Nothing did. As my feelings of euphoria began to fade away, I was left with the slide in my hand from the blade. Blood dripping all over the cutting board, and the counter beside it. Crimson red splattered behind the board, leaving a bloody mess to clean up. I quickly applied pressure, and got a bandaid from the bathroom sink. Applied it, and sopped up the red stained tile with paper towels. As I did so it occurred to me, that feeling can be replicated again. All I needed was a knife, and a will to achieve nirvana. With blood spilt, it would be far easier the next time.
Day 5
Today I find myself on the floor of the kitchen. Staring at the ceiling, thinking of past relationships. The wrongs, the rights. What I did, what I didn’t do. What could have been, and what never will be. These things I find fascinating as a self-exploration exercise. What could I have done wrong to the woman that I once said I loved, so much so that she deems it necessary not to speak to me again. Did I do anything wrong to begin with? Is it true that she will never speak to me again? I find it doubtful, although I do not put myself in high regard on this situation either. I called her my baby doll, because that is what she is for me. I just want her back. Sometimes. However, I want her back for me. She wants me back for her. Maybe we can meet in the middle.
I think of my parents and what they didn’t do for me as a child. They weren’t model citizens, but they also weren’t terrible parents. They just didn’t know how to raise a child, and honestly who the hell does? I fault them not for what they did, but for allowing themselves to have a child in the first place when they were not ready. Bringing a child in to a world you are not prepared for let alone them, is downright despicable. A selfish and vile act of pure arrogance of nature. The arrogance of two to think love is enough to fill the stomach of their child.
Children deserve to be nourished and cared for. They deserve to prosper and have what is needed at their fingertips to grow. Anything below what you are most capable of is a disappointment, however being short of the basic necessities is abuse. This is why I would never have a child, I am not ready nor am I sure that I could truly care. If I could not care, but fake it would that be equally meaningful as a father who truly loves their child? Is it a father a child needs? Or does a child just need a figure. Someone, anyone to emulate. For finding your own way, and your own emulation in the world is the scariest task one might undergo.
Take the child downstairs for example. It cries non-stop, yet the parents do nothing to satiate the child. Whaling on and on. I could never understand bearing your carbon copy, only to neglect them. Why copy yourself to begin with. Let the branch of life come to an end. Let it fizzle out of the universe alongside that great big ball of fire we call a sun. Let us fizzle out like the final firework in the night sky during a Fourth Of July display. Burning ever so slightly less until the stars of the galaxy swallow the light whole, leaving nothing left to be devoured.

• Nicholas Anderson

Some people might say I am deeply arachnophobic, I am not. I say I am not, because it’s not the spiders I fear,. I fear what I don’t know. I don’t know where they are, I don’t know where to expect them, I don’t know what they want. I don’t know. I don’t know… Except this time. This time it seems… different. The spider in my room, it seems to understand me, somehow. Somehow, I understand… it. I’ve never liked spiders, their creepy multiple eyes, their sharp toothed grin ready to snatch away your life at any moment. Sure most spiders aren’t poisonous, but some of them are. That’s all that matters. Some spiders are small, some are massive. I hate the big ones. Ya see, I got bit by a black widow as a child. I was foolishly playing in the garage with my toys, oblivious to the world around me.
At 3 years old, I had my first encounter with this terrestrial alien. The spider that bit me injected me with enough poison to kill a small horse, so the doctor laid me down; She looked over, and with a big smile she said those famous words. “This won’t hurt a bit”. She put no numbing injections, she simply wiped the site clean, and began cutting. Sawing away at my tiny toddler stomach, slowly making their way through layers of fresh, soft, smooth skin. I remember nothing but warm tears streaming down my face as I screamed at the top of my lungs. Screaming at a rate I as a child had not even yet known. The screams of pain, they are unique. People can attempt to mimic them, but the true scream of torture and death is one so blood curddling that it makes your skin crawl. As a child you know only playful screams, this was my first introduction to what pain in the real world looked like. I just so happened to be it’s next patient.
I remember the pain, the cold feeling of blood pouring down my side, and screaming for my father. Yet, my father was the one to hold me down when I started kicking at the doctor from the pain. Rather than force them to stop cutting into a child without some type of anesthetic, he continued to hold my arms and legs as the doctor cut away. My greatest support system, to betray me in such a way. To take the trust of a child and crush it. After that session, I never trusted doctor’s again. I surely, never trusted a spider. That was until now.
That’s because even if the spider in my room were poisonous… It meant me no harm. Even if it did need to nest, and lay eggs it would not do so in my body. Even if it needed sustenance, it would not come in my direction. At least, that’s what it told me. That's what it told me as it's incisors pinched it's way into my arm once again, numbing the area unlike the doctor that went to work on me as a child. As I stare into it's eyes, I realized... I was scared. I was more than scared, for once... I was terrified. For my entire life, I was the one to induce fear in others. Now, that fear was being induced in me. So I am here. I am here to tell you. Until I am not. Let these words keep you from the spiders. Do not talk to them. Do not listen to them.
Do not be afraid. Even though deep down... fear consumes me."